Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to upgrade the further education estate.

The Further Education (FE) Capital Transformation Programme is delivering the government’s £1.5 billion manifesto commitment to upgrade FE college estates in England.

We are delivering a programme of funding to address condition need across the FE sector, allocating £200 million in August 2020 to all FE colleges and designated institutions, to enable providers to undertake immediate remedial work and upgrade the condition of their estates.

We announced the next phase of the FE Capital Transformation Programme in April 2021, with our plans to work in partnership with 16 colleges to upgrade and revitalise some of the worst condition sites in England, with some construction work now beginning.

In April 2022, we announced that up to £405 million of funding is being provided to a further 62 colleges who were successful in bidding for funding through the FE Capital Transformation Fund. The programme will fund two condition improvement projects that will support colleges involved with the Education and Skills Funding Agency Specialist Restructuring Team.

We will aim to provide an update on plans for how we will deliver the remainder of the £1.5 billion of funding later this year.