News analysis BSF closure
Lost learning opportunity?
Axing the Building Schools for the Future programme will add to industry’s woes and could see the loss of further design innovation. But, reports Carina Bailey, not everyone is pessimistic about the cuts
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The closure of the Building Schools for the
Future programme could lead to the collapse of small firms, redundancies and falling design standards, some in the industry fear. Education Secretary Michael
Gove announced last month that the whole BSF scheme was scrapped with immediate effect. This meant 735 school building or ICT projects planned under BSF were cancelled. Gove said BSF was axed
because of the state of public finances, claiming it would have been ‘irresponsible to carry on regardless with an inflexible and needlessly complex programme’. The government is now conducting a review of all investment in schools, early years facilities, colleges and sixth forms. Sebastian James, group operations director of DSG International and review chairman, said: ‘I feel very passionately that we can build a schools infrastructure in Britain that is truly world-class, while significantly reducing our spending.’ Partnerships for Schools, the
body tasked with carrying out BSF, is now working closely with the review team and the Department for Education. According to market analyst Glenigan, the impact on industry of stopping BSF will be dramatic. Cancelled projects that were due to start in 2010 are worth a total of £12bn. Those planned for 2011 and 2012 are valued at £22bn and £24bn respectively. But the design of new schools
still set to go ahead will no longer benefit from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment’s (CABE) design advice service after that too was axed.
12 CIBSE Journal August 2010
Critics of the closure of Building Schools for the Future fear that many dilapidated premises will not now be refurbished Bell says: ‘If the government An opportunity that is now lost is the
volume of schools designs that would have provided projects to apply the 2010 Part L regulations – Martin Mayfield, Arup
CABE’s school design panel was
set up in 2007 to tackle the poor standard of new schools being built. This followed an earlier audit by CABE (in 2006), which found that the design quality of secondary schools built between 2000 and 2005 was not good enough. Under the new system, all bids had to go
through CABE. After the minimum design standard was introduced, any that didn’t meet its assessment criteria didn’t go forward. Matt Bell, CABE’s director of education, says this review service meant that project teams placed a higher priority on design, which continued to improve.
doesn’t want to continue with BSF, that’s its prerogative. We absolutely buy into the need for a cheaper, simpler procurement process. ‘There are obviously going to
be much fewer rebuilds and much more refurbishment, but provided we can hang on to the evidence and the conviction that the school estate does matter hugely, and that we can find intelligent ways to have good teachers and buildings, then there’s no reason to be unduly bleak about the future.’ But Carl Saxon, partner at Hoare
Lea, fears the cutbacks could mean cost-cutting creeping into
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