Treasury announces extra £550m to rebuild schools

The Treasury has announced that funding for the school rebuilding programme will be £550m higher than last year.

Ahead of Wednesday’s Autumn Budget, chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced the allocation of £1.4bn for rebuilding “crumbling” school buildings.

Reeves said protecting funding for education was “one of the things I wanted to do first because our children are the future of this country”.

The existing School Rebuilding Programme aims to deliver 50 rebuilds a year and the renewed commitment to it comes despite the government’s dark talk of a £22bn blackhole in public finances and the need to take “tough decisions”.

The budget is widely expected to include changes to debt rules, cuts to winter fuel benefits for the elderly, and tax rises, including an increase to employer national insurance contributions.

“Our inheritance may be dire, but I will never accept that any child should learn in a crumbling classroom,” said education secretary Bridget Phillipson.

“This is a Budget about fixing the foundations of the country, so there can be no better place to start than the life chances of our children and young people.”

The state of Britain’s school estate has been the subject of greater scrutiny in recent years after buildings across the country were forced to close due to the presence of an outdated type of concrete called reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.

>> Read more: What can the next government do to save our schools and colleges? 

The government has also announced plans for a new five-year rent settlement in social housing, along with a £500m top-up for the 2021-26 Affordable Homes Programme (AHP).

It will consult on the new settlement, with the intention to increase rents in line with the consumer price index measure of inflation plus 1%, as is the case under the existing settlement that expires in April 2026.

It will also seek views on other options, including a 10-year rent settlement, which is popular among social housing sector bodies including the G15, the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institute of Housing.

The additional grant funding for the AHP will bring the total value of the programme to £12bn and is expected to deliver around 5,000 additional affordable homes.

Plans for grant funding beyond the end of the current AHP in 2026 will be revealed in the Spring spending review.