Nottingham City Council is set to approve more than £2.9 million of funding to carry out urgent maintenance and condition works across its maintained school estate, as councillors meet later this month to sign off allocations for the 2025/26 financial year.
A report to the Council’s Executive Board on 20 January confirms that Nottingham has received a £2.65 million School Condition Allocation from the Department for Education, alongside a further £273,186 in devolved capital funding that will be passed directly to individual maintained schools. Together, the combined allocation totals £2,927,627 and is intended to address longstanding issues such as failing roofs, ageing heating systems and structural safety concerns.
The funding forms part of the national school capital maintenance programme, under which local authorities receive annual grants to maintain and repair buildings they are responsible for. In Nottingham, where many school buildings date back several decades, the scale of need continues to far outstrip available funding.
Council officers estimate that the total condition liability across the city’s maintained schools now exceeds £18 million, meaning only the most urgent schemes can be taken forward each year.
For 2025/26, eleven projects have been prioritised following technical assessments of school buildings, with an emphasis on health and safety, structural integrity and ensuring schools remain warm, dry and operational during winter months. A contingency of £459,441 has also been set aside to deal with emergency issues that may arise during the year.
Most of the schemes proposed for approval are continuations of earlier projects that could not be completed within previous budgets or timescales, reflecting the cumulative impact of construction inflation and constrained capital funding in recent years. Works are expected to be delivered during school holidays where possible, including the February half-term, Easter and the summer break in 2026, in order to minimise disruption to pupils.
The report also highlights the ongoing legacy of the national Building Schools for the Future programme, which saw a number of Nottingham schools rebuilt or refurbished in the late 2000s and early 2010s. While the programme itself has long since ended, the Council retains a dedicated BSF lifecycle reserve to cover major maintenance costs for those schools not covered by long-term private finance contracts.
As part of the proposals, up to £300,000 will be released from this reserve to fund condition and lifecycle works at Rosehill Special School, where officers say the building has reached a point where further investment is required to keep it in good condition. Specific works at Rosehill have yet to be prioritised, but the funding would allow the Council to respond as issues are identified.
Councillors are also being asked to delegate authority to senior officers to allocate the contingency funding and to procure contractors using established public sector frameworks. The report warns that if essential maintenance is delayed, schools could face temporary closures due to safety concerns, with a direct impact on children’s education.
The funding will be received in monthly tranches from April 2025 and held in the Council’s capital grant reserve. Some projects may begin during the 2025/26 financial year but will not be completed until the summer of 2026, depending on school access and programme sequencing.
Schools included in the 2025/26 capital maintenance programme are:
Crabtree Primary School – roofing works (£175,000)
Carrington Primary School – roofing works (£190,000)
Seely Primary School – heating works (£150,000)
Melbury Primary School – heating works (£170,000)
Southwold Primary School – roofing works (£190,000)
Dunkirk Primary School (Highfields Campus) – roofing works (£165,000)
Heathfield Primary School – roofing works (£355,000)
Fernwood Primary School – heating works (£310,000)
Walter Halls Primary School – roofing and structural works (£200,000)
Rise Park Primary School – roofing works (£140,000)
Haydn Primary School – roofing works (£150,000)
If approved, the programme will continue the Council’s annual effort to stabilise and extend the life of school buildings across the city, against a backdrop of rising costs, ageing infrastructure and persistent pressure on education capital budgets.
