Guidance

Exceptional costs associated with coronavirus (COVID-19)

Updated 4 December 2020

This guidance was withdrawn on 23 February 2021

This page has been withdrawn as the deadline to submit a claim has passed.

Summary

These instructions are to help you claim exceptional costs related to coronavirus (COVID-19) that were not claimed for during the first window which closed on 21 July 2020. Further information about this is set out in the guidance for exceptional costs associated with coronavirus (COVID-19) for the period from March to July 2020.

Who are these instructions for?

These instructions are for schools, academies, local authorities and multi-academy trusts.

Important points

The online form should be completed by 22 December 2020 for unclaimed eligible exceptional costs incurred from March to July 2020, or during the 2020 summer holiday period for additional free school meals costs.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will aim to pay against claims within funding limits and for identified cost categories received by that date to local authorities at the end of February 2021 and to academies at the beginning of March 2021.

There will be no opportunity to request extensions to this claims window or to resubmit a claim after that date.

This will be the final opportunity to submit a claim against this funding.

Who is eligible to submit a claim?

Claims must be made at school/academy level but can be submitted by individual establishments or collectively by multi-academy trusts on behalf of their academies (via a single claim). Local authorities will have read only access to the claims made by their schools, but will not be able to submit claims on their behalf. Claims may be submitted using the online form by establishments in the following categories:

• primary/secondary/all through maintained schools, academies, and free schools

• 16 to 19 academies and maintained schools

• maintained special schools

• special academies and free schools

• non-maintained special schools

• pupil referral units

• alternative provision academies and free schools

• maintained hospital schools and academies

How to access the claim form

To access the claim form you will need a DfE Sign-in account.

If you already have a DfE Sign-in account

1. Go to the claim form

2. When prompted, enter your DfE Sign-in credentials (this is just for authentication)

3. Choose the organisation for whom you are completing the form

4. Complete the form as instructed in the following sections

5. To access the form for another organisation, sign out and follow steps 1 to 4 again

Your account must be connected to the organisation you are completing the claim form for. You do not need to add any services in DfE Sign-in; it is used only for authentication.

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account

You will need to create one by completing the following steps:

1. Select the create account button from the DfE Sign-in page

2. Enter your name and email address (it is best to use your work email address or one that is clearly associated with your organisation)

3. We will send you an email to verify your email address; copy the code from this email and paste it into the box on the verification page

4. Create a memorable password of 12 characters or more (we recommend joining 3 or more familiar words)

5. Sign in using your new credentials, and request access to the organisation for which you would like to submit a claim

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you can follow the steps outlined under already have a DfE account to complete the form.

You might have noticed the term ‘approver’ during account creation. An approver is someone at your organisation responsible for controlling who has access to DfE Sign-in and the services within the system. It is usually a senior person, such as an administrator or manager.

For security reasons you will need the approval of one of your organisation’s approvers before you can access the form.

If you need further assistance

If you are having problems using the DfE Sign-in service, follow [DfE Sign-in Help].(https://help.signin.education.gov.uk/contact) You will be able to request further assistance if required. When raising a support request, please select ‘other’.

Making a claim

There are different routes to making a claim through the form:

• single establishment

• multi-academy trust on behalf of your academies (in a single claim)

The route you take will depend on the organisation you select when accessing the form. If you choose a multi-academy trust at that stage, you will be able to enter the details for some or all of your academies at the same time.

Should I claim now?

This will be the final opportunity to submit a claim against this funding so if you incurred eligible costs for the period March to July 2020 (plus the summer holidays for additional FSM costs) and have not yet submitted a claim for these costs then you should claim now.

What happens if I need to change my claim?

In order to meet payment timescales, the deadline of 22 December 2020 is a firm one. Up to that date you will be able to resubmit your claim by logging in again and updating the information.

You do not need to submit a request to do this as all claims are recorded and we will take forward your most recent claim as the final version. It will not be possible to grant any extensions to the deadline but, as above, there will be another opportunity to submit a further claim later in the year.

The claim form

Before you begin a claim, you should note that the form is likely to time out after an hour and forty five minutes.

If you are submitting a claim as a multi-academy trust on behalf of individual academies and think it may take you longer than that, you should submit your claim in smaller batches.

There is no save facility on the form and so if your claim does time out before you submit, you will lose any information entered to that point and will need to log in again.

The initial page explains who is eligible to make claims against this funding and which categories of costs are covered. There is a link to the published guidance which you should read before making your claim.

Once you have moved on from the initial page by selecting ‘Continue’ you will log into DfE Sign-in after which the form will load in your browser.

You will then be presented with a number of further pages to work through which will confirm your details, ask you to complete information about what you are claiming, prompt you to complete the required declarations and tell you what will happen after you have submitted the form.

The pages will be in a slightly different format depending on whether you are claiming as a single establishment or as a multi-academy trust.

Your details

The next page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you logged into DfE Sign-in.

For single schools and academies this will show name, URN, and the postal address of the establishment. The funding limit for your establishment, determined by size, is also shown, as set out in the published guidance. The final details on this page are the name and email address of the person who logged into DfE Sign-in.

For local authorities, the details on this page will only show the local authority name, number and the name and email address of the person logged into DfE Sign-in. The individual establishment funding limits will show on the next page.

The same will apply to multi academy-trusts where the details will show the name of the trust and the UID number.

If these details are correct, then all you need do is to select ‘continue’ to go to the next page.

If you believe they are incorrect then please send an email to GrantPayments.ESFA@education.gov.uk and we will investigate.

Please refer to the published guidance to see how the establishment size has been calculated before sending through any queries regarding the total claim limit.

Entering the claim details

The next page asks you to input the amounts of the additional costs you have incurred since March.

There are 3 eligible cost categories against which you can make a claim:

• increased premises related costs of keeping schools open over Easter and summer half-term 2020 school holiday periods, for vulnerable children and children of critical workers

• support for free school meal (FSM) children who are not attending school, other than through the national voucher scheme or summer food scheme: you will need to enter separate amounts for any March to July and summer holiday period costs

• additional cleaning, over and above existing cleaning arrangements, where you have a suspected or confirmed case of coronavirus (COVID-19)

The published guidance has further details on each category and on your eligibility to claim if you are planning on being able to add to your financial reserves at the end of your financial year.

If you are applying as a single school or academy

In each section you should input the costs you wish to claim in whole pounds. You are not required to make a claim against each cost type so please leave the box blank against any category which does not apply to you. If you are applying as a multi-academy trust:

• you will instead be presented with a list of the establishments in your organisation which will show their name, URN, and the total claim limit for each

• to make a claim you would follow the process above by clicking on ‘edit’ against the relevant establishments and entering the details of the costs in the new window which opens

• once you have finished inputting the information for an establishment you should click on the ‘update’ button at the bottom of the list to move onto the next one

Exceeding the funding limit

We expect the funding limits which have been set by the size of the establishment will be sufficient to cover additional costs against the three agreed cost categories in almost all cases. However, we understand that there may be exceptional circumstances which mean that costs are higher than this.

We have designed the claim form so that it is possible to submit claims which are more than the funding limit. The consequences of doing this are that these claims are not guaranteed and will be subject to further assessment.

You will need to provide some narrative information supporting your claim for higher costs and this will need to be assessed further after the claims window closes on 22 December 2020. We may need to get in touch with you to clarify the details and it will take longer to make your payment.

Once you have completed all the relevant information for a single establishment or for as many establishments as you wish to claim for as a multi-academy trust you should click on ‘continue’ at the bottom of the page to move to the next step.

Before you submit your claim

You are almost at the point where you can submit the claim but there is one more step to go through before you can do that.

Declarations

We are asking you to make a number of declarations to indicate you agree:

• that you have the authority to submit a claim for this school and understand that as a recipient of grant funding the school is responsible for protecting public money

• that you will retain records to substantiate this claim and make them available to the Department for Education (DfE) and Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) on request, and understand that any funding provided may be recovered in part or in full if any conditions are not met

• that the details you have entered in this claim are correct and accurate, relate only to exceptional costs associated with coronavirus (COVID-19) in accordance with the guidance published by DfE and ESFA, and do/will not duplicate any financial support provided from other sources to cover the same costs

You will not be able to submit your claim without completing these declarations and to do that you need to tick each box.

If you have made a claim which exceeds the funding limit there will be an additional declaration box to tick to confirm that you understand the different process involved in doing so.

Once you have completed the action on this page you will be able to click ‘accept and send’ to move onto the final page.

Confirmation

The final page will play back to you the details you have submitted and confirm that an email has been sent which includes that information.

It will also confirm the next steps where we aim to pay standard claims to local authorities at the end of February 2021 and to academies at the beginning of March 2021. You will be reminded that the payment process will take longer where the funding limit has been exceeded and that these claims are not guaranteed.

Finally, a reminder that you are able to resubmit claims throughout the claim window until it closes on 22 December 2020.

To do this you only need to log in and update the information. If you do need to resubmit your claim, the existing information will be populated in the form which you can then change. You will be asked to go through the declarations each time you submit a claim.

Because we have designed the form so that it can be completed by single establishments as well as multi-academy trusts it is possible that there is some crossover between those organisations in submitting initial claims or making resubmissions.

We would recommend where bulk claims are being made that multi-academy trusts make their establishments aware of this to avoid any confusion.

Enquiries

Enquiries about how to complete the online form should be directed to our contact us page.

All other enquiries about this funding should be directed to DfE.CoronavirusHelpline@education.gov.uk.