February 27, 2026

DfE’s 10-Year Estates Strategy – There Are Still So Many Questions

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Laura Turner, Director of Elite Finances, Thought Leader for SBM, and School Leader Consultant

The Department for Education has unveiled an ambitious 10-year Education Estates Strategy, promising long-term capital certainty, stronger governance, climate resilience and a decisive shift away from reactive maintenance.

At a national level, the direction of travel is clear: modernise the school estate, embed sustainability and strengthen oversight. But in small primary schools across England, leaders and governors are asking a more cautious question:

How will this actually work in practice?

Rising Expectations, Limited Capacity

From Autumn 2026, schools will complete an annual estates return, designed to improve transparency and strengthen national data on building condition and risk (as outlined in the DfE’s School Estate Management Standards).

Few would dispute the principle. Safe, compliant buildings are fundamental. However, in many small primaries, estates management does not sit within a specialist team. Responsibility typically falls to:

A Grade 4 or 5 caretaker (often part time, term time only)
A School Business Manager (frequently part time)
A headteacher balancing teaching, safeguarding and operational leadership, sometimes still in the classroom

Maintaining asset registers, compliance logs, condition surveys, risk prioritisation data and lifecycle forecasts is far from a light-touch exercise.

Delivering estate maturity at the level expected within the School Estate Management Standards is, in effect, a professional estates function. In many small schools, simply keeping up with existing compliance requirements is already a significant administrative burden.

Governance expectations are rising, but operational capacity has not increased alongside them.

The £5,870 Reality

Funding remains the central concern.

A 170-pupil rural primary currently receives:

£4,000 lump sum
£11 per pupil (170 × £11 = £1,870)

Total annual Devolved Formula Capital (DFC): approximately £5,870.

That figure would not cover a major boiler failure. It would not fund significant roof repairs.
It would not enable meaningful decarbonisation works.

Yet the strategy expects schools to demonstrate long-term lifecycle planning, climate resilience and proactive maintenance.

There is an unavoidable mismatch between ambition and financial reality.

Reforming the Condition Improvement Fund

The strategy confirms that the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) will be replaced by 2028 with a new access model intended to simplify processes.

Currently, schools commission surveys, gather compliance evidence and prepare detailed bids to justify risk, often at significant cost. For a small primary, a single bid cycle can absorb most, if not all, of its annual DFC allocation.

While simplification is welcome, questions remain. If the DfE already holds extensive national condition data – including data gathered through the Condition Data Collection programme – why must schools repeatedly re-evidence the same risks? Why increase administrative workload when much of the data already exists centrally?

Climate Ambition and Scale

The government has committed £710 million nationally to 2029-30 for condition, resilience and decarbonisation which is approximately £177.5 million per year.

To put that into perspective:

One rural primary may require at least £1.5 million to meet minimum decarbonisation standards aligned with the UK Net Zero Strategy.

There are 24,479 schools in England, alongside approximately 217 further education colleges, many of which report annual maintenance backlogs of £1 million or more simply to remain safe and compliant.

If £710 million were divided evenly over four years, it could fully fund roughly 1,000 schools at £700,000 each, only a fraction of the national estate.

The numbers prompt a simple question: will this funding stretch far enough to deliver the transformation outlined?

SEND Provision and Spatial Pressure

Adapting estates to support more children with SEND is widely supported. But inclusion is not achieved by converting a single room. It requires specialist staffing, appropriate equipment, ongoing operational funding, and training.

In smaller primaries, creating SEND spaces can mean losing a classroom – or relying on temporary mobile buildings, increasing both cost and pressure on capacity.

Estates reform cannot operate in isolation from revenue reform.

The Data Schools Need

The strategy proposes developing a framework to make better use of surplus space during demographic change.

This is sensible.

But schools need accessible, integrated intelligence to make informed decisions:

Birth rate projections
Housing development data
Pupil forecasts
Local capacity figures
Pupil Need Capital allocations

Strategic estate planning requires strategic data infrastructure – presented clearly and in one place.

A Governance Question

Perhaps the most sensitive issue concerns governance capacity.

The strategy rightly elevates estates to a governance priority. But do governing bodies – often made up of unpaid volunteers – have the specialist knowledge, time and capacity to oversee increasingly complex estates frameworks?

Strategic lifecycle planning, decarbonisation oversight, risk management and compliance assurance require technical understanding.

Governors are dedicated and conscientious. However, as expectations increase, so too does the weight of responsibility placed on those giving their time voluntarily. As one sector voice recently put it, “it’s a lot to ask of unpaid volunteers.”

If estates are now central to governance, governors will require meaningful support, including accessible advice, structured training and perhaps even a dedicated estates advisory service.

A Positive Direction – With Practical Conditions

There is broad support for the direction of travel. Long-term signals, climate integration and a move away from reactive maintenance are widely welcomed.

But ambition must be matched by:

Realistic base capital funding
Reduced administrative duplication
Investment in operational capacity
Strengthened governance support

A 170-pupil school cannot deliver a decade of national renewal on £5,870 per year, and unpaid governing bodies cannot absorb unlimited strategic responsibility without additional support.

The Education Estates Strategy may mark a turning point. Whether it becomes sustainable reform or simply additional strain will depend not on vision, but on delivery.

I look forward to seeing how the DfE tangibly makes this policy work.

About The Author

Laura Turner began her career at Cheshire County Council as a School Budget Officer and has since worked nationally supporting schools, trusts and colleges with financial leadership and strategic planning. She has held senior roles including Finance Manager, School Business Manager and Chief Financial Officer, and previously led the Schools Audit Team at Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Laura leads the Cheshire Finance Network Group and is currently progressing towards becoming a DfE School Resource Management Adviser (SRMA). She is AAT qualified and a member of ACCA.