Purpose

The Department for Education allocates funding
each year to help maintain and improve the condition of school
buildings and grounds which continue to operate as maintained
establishments.

Education Support Services recommends that £180,846.09 is
allocated from the SCA to Building Services, Strategic Assets and
Land to be spent on cyclical maintenance.

Investment should be prioritised on keeping school buildings safe
and in good working order by tackling poor building condition,
building compliance, energy efficiency, and health and safety
issues. Throughout the year planned works will be required to
schools. The schools have been identified as the third phase of
works for individual projects with a value below £100,000 for
2024/25.

Education Support Services meet regularly with representatives from
Building Services and Strategic Assets and Land Engineering team to
discuss the maintained school sites to agree priority based upon
condition survey data.

A contingency of 10% has been included within the project
costs.

All unspent contingency will be reinvested to the carry forward
balance for the SCA. These projects are being funded by savings on
other projects and unused contingency.

Content

(1) That approval be given to:
i) proceed with the programme of works as listed in Appendix 1
(Approval References SCA/2024/027 – SCA/2024/037).

ii) allocate a total of £180,846.09 from the School Condition
Allocation reserves (SCA) to enable the individual works listed in
Appendix 1 to proceed.

(2) Require in connection with (1) above, that the following
actions are implemented to reduce any risk to the council in
connection with School Condition:

• Ensure that repair / maintenance work for schools is
undertaken following an analysis of pre-determined criteria and
that records are maintained to demonstrate the priority need of
each school;

• Ensure that a corporate Risk Register is maintained and
reviewed to ensure all risks are appropriately identified and
assessed, with adequate mitigation;

• That cost estimates are reviewed to ensure that any future
costs can be managed within the allocated funding.