
On March 26th, the CIF Results were announced for the 2024/25 round of funding applied for in December 2023. This year, the results were staggering. Only 866 projects were awarded funding, at 733 academies across the UK. This is down from 1,033 projects awarded in 2023. This is a massive decrease in funding, approximately £6 million less in fact, as the Department for Education announced that they have awarded “just under £450 million” this year.
The Department for Education said it was spending another £1.8 billion to refurbish school buildings, including through CIF, and has allocated more than £17 billion since 2015. The Condition Improvement Fund is funding for improvement projects which can be applied for by small academy trusts, voluntary-aided bodies, and sixth-form colleges.
There are of course other streams of funding for schools, such as SCA funding, which is specifically for larger academy trusts who are not applicable for CIF who receive an allocated amount each year. There is also the School Rebuilding Programme., however, despite the awards for the SRP to several schools, nothing has progressed further yet, leaving the schools in poor condition while they wait. This has been awarded to around 500 schools, of which will be spread over a decade to complete.
Even though that along with this years CIF announcement there are still 40 projects pending award, the amount awarded is still catastrophically below the required amount to begin to address all the dire school conditions.
The last resort for any submitted applications for CIF for 2024/25 that have not been successful is to appeal the result. In order to help our clients who have not been successful so far, we will be doing all that we can to progress appeals with the hope of the projects being awarded after all.