Last week I was delighted to learn that Warren Wood Community Primary School and Language Unit in Rochester was one of the successful applicants of the £435 million Condition Improvement Fund (CIF). The funding is designated for 1,276 projects at 1,030 academies and sixth-form colleges.
This welcome funding for the reroofing project to be undertaken at Warren Wood Community Primary School will be an essential improvement to the schooling conditions for pupils. Earlier this month I took the pleasure in attending the School’s careers assembly and seeing the enthusiasm for both their learning and future, and I look forward to another visit with this worthy project completed.
This announcement follows on from the announcement in February of the allocation of £200 million of Devolved Formula Capital to schools and the School Condition Allocations to local authorities, voluntary aided schools and larger multi-academy trusts.
The core priority of CIF is keeping academy and sixth-form college buildings safe and in good working order. Most CIF funding aims to address issues with significant consequences that revenue or Devolved Formula Capital (DFC) funding cannot meet. These include issues with poor building condition, building compliance, energy efficiency and health and safety.
CIF also supports a small proportion of expansion projects for Ofsted-rated good or outstanding academies and sixth-form colleges that need to expand their existing facilities and/or floor space to either increase the number of admissions in the main year of entry or address overcrowding. In addition to this funding for expansion of good and outstanding academies and colleges, we are also making over £200 million capital funding available to support the expansion of special education needs provision and the creation of new special schools. We will say more about how this will be distributed later this year.
More information on CIF, including the full list of successful projects published can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/condition-improvement-fund-2016-to-2017-outcome.