Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many staff at the Education Funding Agency assist with assessing applications to the Condition Improvement Fund; and how many staff assisted with such applications in each of the last three years.

Each CIF application was assessed twice independently. 9 EFA technical assessors worked on the assessment of CIF bids between January and February 2016 (alongside other duties). The EFA also contracted 2 external technical assessor suppliers to assess CIF applications. These suppliers assessed CIF bids between January and February 2016. Each supplier utilised some 25-30 assessors in total through the period, reducing or increasing levels according to the progress they were making against the deadline for assessing bids. In addition 9 other EFA staff worked on the Condition Improvement Fund throughout the 2016-17 programme on matters like processing applications and managing assessors.

The resource approach to previous bidding rounds has been similarly based on the volume of applications received.