Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential need for HEPA filters in early years educational settings.

Good ventilation is associated with improved alertness and concentration. Letting fresh air into indoor spaces can also help remove air that contains virus particles and other airborne contaminants, and is important in reducing the spread of airborne infections, including COVID-19 and flu.

Over the last two years, the Department has provided CO2 monitors to every state funded school and childcare provider, including early years providers, in England to help identify poorly ventilated spaces across their estates and help manage the need for ventilation and thermal comfort. Feedback from these suggests that, in most schools and childcare providers, existing ventilation measures are sufficient.

For the very few schools and childcare providers where maintaining good ventilation is not possible, the Department has supplied High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) air cleaning units. All state funded early years providers were eligible, including private, voluntary and independent providers, and childminders who work together in groups of four or more and are registered as operating childcare on domestic premises. All eligible applications received during the previous roll out have been fulfilled and the Department is currently working through this year’s applications. Air cleaning units are not a substitute for ventilation and are not necessary in spaces that are adequately ventilated.

This approach is in keeping with SAGE’s Environmental Modelling Group advice. This states that air cleaning devices, including HEPA Filtration and ultraviolet technology have limited benefit in spaces that are already adequately ventilated and should only be considered where the ventilation is inadequate and cannot be easily improved.

Both the Health and Safety Executive and the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers use a CO2 threshold of 1500ppm to indicate poor ventilation. This is the threshold the Department has used as criteria for the supply of air cleaning units.

The Department has published guidance in the Building Bulletin 101 (BB101), which provides guidelines on indoor and outdoor air quality in new and refurbished schools, this also provides helpful guidance to early years providers: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-bulletin-101-ventilation-for-school-buildings. BB101 guidance promotes best practice in controlling pollutants and setting maximum standards for levels of pollutants indoors.