Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will hold discussions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on increasing capital expenditure on schools to help make safety improvements to their buildings.

The Department engages regularly with HM Treasury on a number of matters, including capital investment in the school estate. This includes official and ministerial engagement where appropriate.

The Priority School Building Programme (PSBP) was announced in 2012 and has been rebuilding and/or refurbishing buildings at 532 schools across the country, with buildings prioritised according to their condition.

The School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) is the successor programme to PSBP and was announced in June 2020 to carry out major rebuilding and refurbishment projects at 500 schools across England, with buildings prioritised based on their condition. There are now 400 projects in the programme. The most recent set of 239 schools were announced in December 2022.

In addition to these programmes, the Department allocates annual condition funding to schools and those responsible for school buildings to maintain and improve the condition of the school estate. The Department has allocated over £13 billion for this purpose since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed for the current financial year.

The Department recently announced that eligible schools will also receive an allocation from an additional £447 million in capital funding in 2022/23 for capital improvements to buildings and facilities, prioritising works to improve energy efficiency.

Condition allocations for individual schools and responsible bodies are published online and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-capital-funding.