Jess Phillips – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jess Phillips on 2016-06-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many academy schools hold the freehold of their school sites.

Edward Timpson

The Department does not retain a central record of the land holding arrangements for individual academies. However, the vast majority of academies will be occupying sites on the basis of a lease from the relevant local authority.

No school gains the freehold of a school site as a result of becoming an academy. Academies own their own land only where the school already owned the land before converting to academy status. These are usually former foundation or voluntary schools which are generally the freeholders of their own land even as maintained schools and in the case of voluntary schools which tend to mainly occupy land which was not originally provided by the state.

The Department does not have detailed information on the current and historic ownership of academy land and buildings, and had chosen not to prioritise the expenditure necessary to resolve the issue.