Infrastructure delivery

We use building surveys to prioritise and deliver our annual school building capital maintenance programme.

We’re currently updating our school condition surveys (last undertaken in 2013/14 by MITIE Compliance) with the original surveys available to schools.

We are currently visiting all maintained schools completing energy audits to help identify opportunities for carbon reduction and improved energy efficiency.

Maintenance guidance

Schools are responsible for revenue maintenance which, as a rule, costs less than £10,000. 

ECC is only responsible for funding school capital maintenance which, as a rule, costs more than £10,000. 

We strongly advise schools to consider retaining the services of and developing relationships with property consultants and companies.

They are often happy to work with schools to identify revenue and capital maintenance issues.

If capital investment is required, they are also often well-placed to communicate this to ECC.

Capital maintenance programmes

Our capital maintenance programme aims to make sure ECC discharges its responsibility to carry out major maintenance to maintain school buildings to a reasonable condition.

ECC has always sought contributions from schools towards the cost of their capital maintenance projects. However, the level of school contributions has not changed significantly since the 1990s and these no longer reflect current building costs.

Contributions

To address this, the Essex Schools Forum has ratified a standard school contribution for all maintenance projects of between £40 and £50 per pupil.

This contribution is subject to the following rules:

• only schools in the year's planned maintenance programme contribute
• headteachers must agree on contributions before work begins
• schools can make contributions from their formula capital or revenue budgets
• contributions are taken once works starts on sites
• schools may appeal if they believe contributions are unfair
• only 1 contribution per school, per year, no matter how many ECC-funded maintenance projects are being undertaken at a school
• contributions help make sure the school capital maintenance budget levels are sustained each year

Schools will be notified as early as possible if they’re included in an annual planned maintenance programme - certainly by the end of June.

Schools are advised to budget £50 per pupil in case of inclusion. 

Following the publication of the programme each year, that money can be uncommitted if not needed for a contribution. Lack of maintenance by the school, which results in a maintenance project to be undertaken, may increase the cost to £80 per pupil. 

It’s proposed to use the DfE recommended level of revenue balances (as used in the falling rolls fund balances criteria) to determine the contributions each school should make. The proposed tier approach is detailed as follows:

• schools with revenue balances of 8% or less (5% or less for secondary schools) will continue to contribute £40 per pupil
• schools with revenue balances above 8% (above 5% for secondary schools) but less than 20% will contribute £45 per pupil
• schools with revenue balances of 20% or higher will contribute £50 per pupil

Revenue balances are shown as a percentage of the revenue budget allocation for the relevant financial year.

We propose to implement the new tiered approach from 1 April 2024.

Mitie partnership

We work in partnership with Mitie to run annual capital maintenance programmes. Schools can report capital maintenance issues directly to Mitie by contacting:

Telephone: 0333 013 2288

Email: ecc.helpdesk@mitie.com

Contact us

For more information about property and capital maintenance download and use our Schools Property Handbook (Word, 109KB).

For more information or if you have any questions about property and capital maintenance email ecc.helpdesk@mitie.com