Impact of Building Schools for the Future announcement of Monday 5 July 2010 1. This list sets out the impact on schools of the announcement on Building Schools for the Future (BSF) made by the Secretary of State for Education on Monday 5 July 2010. It has been produced by Partnerships for Schools (PfS) after validation at senior level in Local Authorities and rigorously checked by the Department for Education, including by making telephone contact with every Local Authority listed and with all affected Academy sponsors. 2. This process of checking has been necessary because of the complexity of the BSF process, to ensure the accuracy of this list and, in particular, because, to date, PfS has collected data from Local Authorities about BSF schools as they progressed. Rather than micromanaging individual schools, PfS has relied on Local Authority-level information. 3. All Local Authorities which were participating in BSF are listed, plus those who have had one school pathfinders or academies built or being built through the Partnerships for Schools Academies Framework. That is 102 Local Authorities out of a total of 152. And every school which was included within a Local Authority project is listed and is categorised as either ‘open’, ‘unaffected’, ‘for discussion’ or ‘stopped’. 1592 schools are listed in total. 159 are categorised as ‘open’, 547 as ‘unaffected’, 151 as ‘for discussion’ and 735 as ‘stopped’. 4. For simplicity, and because large numbers of pupils cross constituency boundaries to attend school, this list does not provide a breakdown of schools by constituency. 5. There are many examples of Local Authorities in this list having schools in more than one of these categories. This is because investment through BSF has typically, in larger Local Authorities, taken place in separate ‘waves’ and many have academy projects at various stages of development. 6. Most Local Authorities procure ‘Local Education Partnerships’ (LEPs), to deliver BSF projects at school level. In summary, the procurement process for establishing a LEP is as follows: Remit This marks the formal entry of a local authority into the BSF programme. The local authority has been assessed to be ready to progress their project and is advised by Partnerships for Schools (PfS) of an indicative allocation of future funding. At this stage the authority will have been actively engaging with its schools community, will have assessed pupil place requirements and will be considering issues such as amalgamation and closure of schools as well as status of schools. 1 Pre- This phase is broken into two stages; the first to develop the procurement educational strategy linked to an investment strategy known as the ‘Strategy for Change’ and the second, more technical, requirement to prepare an Outline Business Case (OBC). An OBC articulates how the estate strategy will be delivered and that the project is sufficiently robust, deliverable and affordable to move into a market competition. Some components of an OBC require HM Treasury (HMT) approval to specific criteria, notably if PFI is involved. An approval of an OBC gives the local authority a firmer indication of the funding envelope and gives permission to start procurement. Notice in the A LEP procurement is governed by EU regulation called Official Competitive Dialogue. A notice in the Official Journal of the Journal of European Union (OJEU) indicates the intention of the local the authority to procure and gives a clear indication to the market European of both scope and timetable, inviting expressions of interest. Union The process is determined by European Law. The first step is (OJEU) to pre-qualify bidders from a long-list of interested parties and then to determine a short-list of three bidding consortia. The consortia comprise a number of companies such as construction, ICT and facilities management providers and possibly funders. Dialogue The three shortlisted bidders are invited to discuss the local authority’s requirements in more detail and to submit formal bids setting out their response, including outline designs. One of the bidders is rejected at this stage and the remaining two bidders are taken through more detailed dialogue which involves detailed design development, negotiation of contractual terms and the funding arrangements. Close of The Close of Dialogue is a formal part of the legal process Dialogue where the authority confirms that the bidders have met their Preferred requirements and invites bidders to submit their final bid with Bidder well developed designs and prices. The bids are evaluated by the authority and a preferred bidder is selected by elected members on the recommendation of officers. Financial This is the point where contracts are signed between the close procuring authority and the private sector partner for the creation of the LEP together with two or more of the first schools to be delivered (known as ‘sample schools’). There are further ‘closes’ at school level during the life of the LEP. Approval is given after evaluation of a final business case and at this point local authorities receive a confirmation of BSF funding. 2 Operational The principle of a LEP procurement is that the contractor is LEP – one awarded the exclusive opportunity to deliver capital wave of investment to schools in the local authority area for 10 years. investment Contractually any investment in schools above a determined level (typically £250k) must be offered to the LEP subject to performance criteria. The first procurement for a ‘wave’ of BSF investment covers, typically around ten schools. Two of those schools are used to test the bidders in competition – one capital funded and one PFI. These are known as ‘sample schools’. The scope of the wave and capital value is part of the invitation to the market and is set out within the contracts signed. The remaining eight schools (known as ‘non-samples’ or the ‘pipeline’) are then delivered by the partnership without further HMT-level approvals. The LEP delivers the eight schools in the ‘pipeline’ through a process determined by the contract. This leads to a financial close on each individual school. At any one time the LEP may have several schools in various stages of development. Operational Some local authorities have a further ‘repeat’ wave of funding LEP – more after the procurement has been concluded, to deliver further than one schools. This does not require a procurement process as the wave of LEP is already in place, with exclusive rights to deliver. investment However, repeat waves do need formal approval from central Government to secure additional funding. National At the pre-procurement stage some BSF projects conclude Academy that the National Academy Framework offers a more Framework appropriate delivery method for their project. The framework was established under European procurement rules and has panel of construction companies which compete for design and build contracts, typically of lower value than the LEP procurements. PFI projects are not delivered through this route. Individual Academy projects are delivered through this procurement method where there is no Local Education Partnership in place or in response to local circumstances. 7. Schools listed as ‘Open’ in this list are those in which the procurement has delivered the planned new building, refurbishment, extension or ICT. For simplicity, ‘open’ is used for all complete projects, even where the project was for ICT only. 8. Schools listed as ‘Unaffected’ in this list are those which are within initial LEP or Academy Framework procurements which have reached ‘Financial Close’; or which for BSF are within a repeat wave of investment 3 which was approved prior to 1 January 2010. 9. Schools listed as ‘Stopped’ in this list are those which are within initial LEP procurements which had not yet reached ‘Financial Close’ (other than the ‘sample’ schools in projects which had passed the ‘Close of Dialogue’ point) or are Academy Framework projects, which had not achieved Financial Close, and where there is no funding agreement in place and the Academy is not open or about to open; or which were to have been in a repeat wave of investment, but which had not received approval prior to 1 January 2010. 10. Schools listed as ‘For Discussion’ in this list are either: a. those which were to have been ‘sample’ schools in projects which were at an advanced stage in the procurement process (that is, they had passed the ‘Close of Dialogue’ point described above), but which had not yet reached ‘Financial Close’; or b. academies where the building projects have not reached financial close, but are either already open, have a signed Funding Agreement, are due open in the next academic year or are making completely new provision. Complexity of local circumstances 11. These criteria have been applied consistently to all projects. The list is intended to describe the result of applying these criteria to schools as simply as possible. However, there are very significant complexities to the programme, as set out above. This gives rise to a wide variety of complicated local circumstances. A number of these are explained below. To avoid creating a very complicated list, a number of simplifying conventions have been adopted to deal with these complexities. These are also described below. a. Joint LEPs – there are a number of instances where a Local Authority, rather than establish its own LEP to deliver school projects, had worked to establish a joint LEP with another Local Authority and would have had its school projects treated as a subsequent ‘wave’ for approval and investment through that LEP. In such cases, it is possible that the initial ‘wave’ of investment for one Local Authority will be unaffected, but that the subsequent ‘wave’ for the second Local Authority will be stopped. This is the case, for example, in Salford (all projects unaffected) and Wigan (most projects stopped); b.