Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether further education colleges are allowed access to borrowing from the Public Works Loan Board; and if he will make a statement.

The Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) provides loans to local authorities, and other specified bodies, from the National Loans Fund, operating within a policy framework set by HM Treasury. This borrowing is for capital projects.

Colleges cannot borrow from PWLB as this is considered beyond the PWLB’s remit.

The department has designed a package of measures to enable colleges to continue to invest in their estates.

The department is taking a number of steps to assist the sector with funding, including providing colleges with additional capital grant allocations totalling £150 million. Individual college allocations were published in December and will be paid from April. The full list is on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fe-capital-funding#additional-fe-capital-funding-for-the-2022-to-2023-financial-year.

The department is also bringing forward £300 million in payments from the 2023/2024 financial year into the 2022/2023 financial year to cover the shortfall that providers experience in February and March 2023. This means making additional payments to institutions in February and March.

The Department’s officials are working on options to support the delivery of capital projects by the sector. One of these options is a possible department-backed loans scheme for colleges that were intending to borrow commercially in order to fund a capital project.