School estates body says money for ‘basic need’ building work at schools is close to a third below what it should be

classroom education useful

The amount of money being directed to local authorities to carry out “basic need” building work at schools is close to a third below what it should be, according to the chair of a body of school estates professionals.

A new report by the Educational Building and Development Officers Group (EBDOG), sent into the National Audit Office, says real construction costs are around 16% higher than the Education Funding Agency (EFA) rates on which the Department for Education bases its funding.

Local authorities are facing a school places headache with the government’s best estimates suggesting a total of 600,000 new school places will need to be found between 2015 and the end of the current parliament in 2020.

For primary schools, shortfalls have meant local authorities have been left to top up central government funds to get schemes under way while experts worry that more resource-heavy secondary schools are facing bigger problems.

The government - which has provided between £800m and £1.4bn a year since 2010 and has allocated £1.2bn on average for the next three years for so-called “basic need” work - claims the funding, based on the EFA’s cost benchmarks, should be adequate.

But Peter Colenutt, head of strategic development at Hampshire council and the chair of EBDOG, said his “initial feeling” was that funding was 20-30% short of what is required to deliver extra secondary places. He added: “Our big worry is that the cost we’ll be allocated will not be adequate to do the job. We need to deliver buildings to reasonable quality or we create a big maintenance liability from day one.”

The EFA’s cost benchmarks are based on large frameworks for the procurement of big multi-school construction programmes meaning one-off small jobs will not be able to get the same rates as those schemes bundled up into frameworks.

Colenutt added: “We have significant concerns about secondary schools and the cost multiplier. We’re worried it will lead to significant funding shortfalls.

“The infrastructure needs for secondary school are much greater.”