Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of re-evaluating the existing capital funding scheme for Further Education.

Ensuring schools and colleges have the resources and buildings they need is a key part of this government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every young person the best start in life. The government is investing £6.7 billion of capital funding for education in the 2025/26 financial year, a 19% real-terms increase from the 2024/25 financial year, including £950 million in skills. The department currently provides capital funding for further education (FE) through a wide range of programmes.

In the Spring Statement 2025, £625 million of funding was announced to support construction skills training. The funding includes capital investment through the establishment of Technical Excellence Colleges and the creation of an employer match funding pot worth £80 million.

On 1 April 2025, the department provided £302 million in new funding to FE colleges to support them to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estates. The new FE college condition allocation will help address the maintenance backlog and ensure a great environment for learning. Every FE college group will receive a share of this funding and will have the discretion to decide how funding is spent towards condition priorities for their estate.

The department keeps all FE capital funding programmes under continuous review and any future capital investment will be subject to the spending review, which is due to conclude in summer 2025.