Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-01-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s press release on its Spending Review 2015 settlement, published on 25 November 2015, what proportion of the £23 billion for capital investment will be spent on (a) opening new academies, (b) creating additional school places, (c) opening new free schools and (d) rebuilding schools and addressing maintenance needs.

Edward Timpson

The £23 billion will allow us to open a further 500 free schools, support the provision of over 600,000 additional school places, rebuild and refurbish over 500 schools and address essential school maintenance needs.

We have already allocated £7 billion for the creation of new school places this parliament. We are currently in the process of determining allocations for future years.

Between 2015 and 2018 we will also invest £4.2bn of allocations across schools, local authorities, academy trusts and voluntary aided partnerships to improve the condition of those schools. We will announce details of condition allocations beyond 2018 in due course.

We are delivering £2.4 billion of investment across 260 schools through the first phase of the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP), which began in 2012 and is now into the delivery phase.

A further £2 billion across 277 schools will be invested through the second phase of the PSBP by 2021.