Guidance

Priority School Building Programme 2: application guidelines

Updated 19 December 2014

1. Priority School Building Programme 2 - application guidelines

Department for Education (DfE) will fund a further phase of the Priority School Building Programme, with a value of around £2 billion. The intention is to undertake major rebuilding and refurbishment projects to address the needs of those schools in the very worst condition. This programme will run alongside our wider efforts to support local authorities, dioceses, academies, and multi-academy trusts in addressing the condition needs of their estates.

Local authorities, dioceses, academies, and multi-academy trusts (depending on the nature of the school) can submit expressions of interest for an entire school site or for one or multiple individual buildings. Education Funding Agency (EFA) expects to have completed the Property Data Survey Programme by the summer and will use this to assess the scale and severity of condition need and the extent to which projects provide value for money.

DfE and EFA do not want to discourage expressions of interest where there is significant need. But neither do we want to raise expectations unrealistically and encourage speculative bids which are unlikely to be successful.

To help bodies determine the likelihood of an expression of interest being successful, DfE and EFA have provided the following application guidelines. DfE and EFA would strongly encourage all interested parties to consider these guidelines carefully when selecting which of their schools or buildings to include in an expression of interest.

DfE and EFA anticipate the bar for inclusion will be high, to ensure that we are targeting our resources most effectively on those schools in the very worst condition. DfE and EFA would expect each body to submit expressions of interest for a small number of high priority projects.

Lower priority projects should be funded from the regular local authority maintenance allocations, Local Authority Coordinated Voluntary Aided Programme (LCVAP) allocations, or from Academies Capital Maintenance Fund (ACMF).

1.1 General principles

• DfE and EFA will prioritise projects where the cost of addressing the need would be hardest for local authorities, dioceses, academy trusts, or individual academies to fund locally through their regular maintenance allocations – in other words, those where the cost of meeting the need is very significant
• DfE and EFA will prioritise projects where the costs of continuing to maintain the site or the building are so high that it clearly makes better economic sense to address the need wholesale – either by rebuilding or completely refurbishing it
• DfE and EFA do not anticipate the programme funding schools which have recently received significant investment
• DfE and EFA will not include projects which aim to address the suitability of school buildings
• Where there is a good case for increasing the size of the school at the same time as addressing the condition, DfE and EFA will work closely with the local authority to bring our funding together with local Basic Need funding so that this can be done

1.2 Projects to address the need in entire schools

Schools may qualify for whole school rebuilds or refurbishments where they have a combination of significant condition needs across all buildings on the school site. This is likely to include a need to replace existing roofs, structural issues (such as cracks and defects in load bearing walls), large scale replacement of windows and doors, and mechanical and electrical services replacement.

In assessing these DfE and EFA will be considering whether it is more economical to rebuild the whole school rather than continuing to patch and mend the existing structure.

1.3 Projects to address the need in individual buildings

Schools may also qualify where significant condition need is isolated to specific buildings rather than the entire school site. Under these circumstances, it may make economic sense to rebuild or refurbish specific buildings and not the entire school.

Further detailed guidance on the application process will be issued during May 2014.