60 FE colleges to bid for £550m upgrade cash

Aaron Morby 13 years ago
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Plans to upgrade the nation’s Further Education estate of 246 colleges received a boost today when the Government unveiled a new £550m two-year investment programme.

Around 56 colleges were recently granted funding for improvements, but extra cash released by the Chancellor will allow further tranches of improvements to go through.

Under the new programme a further 18 colleges who just missed the cut will go forward for funding alongside a further 42 unsuccessful projects which need to resubmit plans by 1 March.

A decision on which projects will receive a chunk of funding will be made in April.

Projects must be at least £3m in size or require up to £10m in Government funding.

A special project development fund has also been set up to allow colleges to enlist professionals to survey their estates and draw up improvement plans that comes into being today.

The new investment strategy has been put in place after surveys of FE colleges found at least one third of the estate poor or inoperable.

Similarly colleges with the worst building condition incurred annual maintenance costs  34% higher than
those estates with better quality estates.

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