Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, from which capital programmes the £500 million of repurposed capital funding for energy efficiency announced on 6 December 2022 comes.

The Department manages its capital budget throughout each financial year, so that any underspends that arise can be reprioritised to get the best value for money from available funding. The nature of large capital programmes means that programmes spend at different rates through any given year.

The Department has chosen to prioritise capital underspends for the 2022/23 financial year on £500 million for schools and colleges to help improve energy efficiency. This is in addition to the £1.8 billion of condition funding already allocated this financial year to improve and maintain the school estate. This is also additional to the £1.5 billion funding in upgrading the further education (FE) college estate through the FE capital transformation programme, and the £150 million of capital funding following the announcement about the reclassification of the FE sector.

This announcement does not mean that any programmes have had required funding removed, and existing programmes will continue as planned. The Department updates its annual budget via Parliament twice a year through the Main and Supplementary estimates process, which sets out the expected budget by area of spend.