Is maintenance spending going to be enough to overcome the social infrastructure backlog?

The government has promised that, by the 2034/35 financial year, it will be spending at least £10bn per year on maintaining the health, education and justice estates.

This will sit alongside significant cash injections into the New Hospital Programme (NHP), School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) and prison expansion efforts in a bid to address multi-estate dilapidation. But the big question is, will this funding be enough in practice?

After months of speculation around phase two of the spending review and the infrastructure strategy, it is certainly positive to see the government put some weight behind the repair and maintenance (R&M) of social infrastructure.

Private finance is controversial when it comes to funding the likes of hospitals and schools, and the government is only considering public-private partnerships (PPPs) where there is a revenue stream, value for money for taxpayers, and where appropriate risk-transfer can be achieved.

The sheer volume of maintenance backlogs across the health, education and justice estates is eye-watering and could require more funding than the government is willing or able to offer

In light of previous private finance initiatives, it is simply less costly in the long run for the government to fund social infrastructure projects itself.

However, the sheer volume of maintenance backlogs across the health, education and justice estates is eye-watering and could require more funding than the government is willing or able to offer. New estate returns information collection (ERIC) data for the NHS estate is due in October, but an initial glance at the latest figures and five-year trends suggests the new maintenance budget could fall short.

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In the 2023/24 fiscal year, the cost to eradicate the NHS maintenance backlog stood at £13.8bn. This was 53% higher than the cost in 2019/20 and a rise of nearly one-fifth (19%) on the previous financial year. Specifically, this cost covers outstanding maintenance work that should have already been completed. Planned maintenance work comes at an additional cost.

Trends in maintenance costs also suggest that this figure will continue to increase. In the same five-year period (April 2019 to March 2024), the “BCIS All-in Maintenance Cost Indices – General”, which represent the movement of maintenance costs in the whole economy, rose by 26%. In other words, the real-time cost of R&M could outrun the money the government plans to spend.

Cost inflation aside, the proposed maintenance budget may not be enough for the NHS estate anyway. From 2025/26 to 2034/35, over £6bn of the total maintenance budget for the public estate will be spent on R&M across the NHS estate.

Since 2019/20, the average annual change in the NHS’s maintenance backlog cost has been just under 17%. If this trend were to continue without intervention, the cost would reach £30bn by the end of the decade.

However, this assumption relies on the cost to eradicate the backlog decreasing or staying the same. Last year, it rose by 19% – obviously a step in the wrong direction.

Elsewhere, it remains unclear whether the current maintenance budget will even cover the existing backlogs in the education and justice estates.

At a first glance, spending confirmed in the infrastructure strategy appears sufficient. In September 2024, HM Prison and Probation Service estimated that £2.8bn would need to be spent in the following five years to bring prisons into a fair condition.

Spending allocated to maintain the justice estate comes in just shy of this at £2.5bn over five years, with £500m allocated for this financial year and £600m confirmed per year in the four years to 2029/30.

The school and college estate will receive £2.4bn in 2025/26, rising to nearly £3bn per year by 2034/35. This is a significant boost to the Department for Education’s budget for school building maintenance in particular, which stood at £1.8bn for the 2023/24 financial year.

The risk is that ongoing legacy projects, such as HS2, and new major infrastructure schemes, such as Sizewell C, will consume construction’s workforce before R&M on social infrastructure can take place

However, addressing the maintenance backlogs in these estates will also depend on the rate of cost inflation in construction, as well as the sector’s capacity to deliver the maintenance work needed. Following the publication of the infrastructure pipeline and pending the government’s ability to attract private investors, the construction sector could see a demand influx that training and apprenticeship plans simply cannot match.

The risk is that ongoing legacy projects, such as HS2, and new major infrastructure schemes, such as Sizewell C, will consume construction’s workforce before R&M on social infrastructure can take place.

The government’s main priority is to stimulate growth through economic infrastructure and, while urgent, maintenance backlogs are often seen as financial burdens that can be overlooked in favour of delivering large capital schemes.

An inconsistency in government data is also an alarm bell where the true cost of maintenance backlogs is concerned. The National Audit Office suggests the government’s maintenance backlog is currently around £49bn but has said the poor condition of data on the extent of estate disrepair means this figure is likely to be higher.

The government has committed to investing to resolve the social infrastructure crisis, but potential underestimates, capacity issues and inflation may well compound the nation’s backlog even further.

Karl Horton is the data services director at the Building Cost Information Service