Condition due diligence when a school joins your trust

By Grayling Thomas Architects · November 2026

Before a school joins your trust, condition due diligence should establish who will hold the land and buildings, what the buildings will need spent on them over the next few years, whether the compliance records (asbestos, fire, gas, electrical, water) are complete, and whether any capital projects, loans or funding commitments come with the school. An academy due diligence condition survey answers the cost question with evidence and exposes the gaps in the rest. The Department for Education (DfE) lists "the school buildings and estate" among the areas an incoming trust's due diligence will usually assess, and leaves the extent of that work to the trust.

This guide is for the trust CFO or growth lead who has to put a figure on the estate before the board votes. Our guides on choosing a school condition surveyor and turning survey findings into a five-year plan cover those later steps in depth. This one is about the decision that comes before them.

What does a trust inherit with a school's buildings?

More than the buildings, and the route the school takes decides how.

A maintained school converting into your trust brings its site through land arrangements set out in the DfE's conversion guidance. A community school "will enter into a long-term lease with your local authority". For church schools, "Most often, the local authority owns the playing fields and the diocese owns the school buildings." Voluntary and foundation schools may need a trust modification order as well. Each arrangement fixes who answers for which parts of the site, and a survey that ignores the land position can end up pricing repairs to a building the trust will never control.

An academy moving from another trust comes across under a commercial transfer agreement, which the DfE says "is used to transfer assets and liabilities (including contracts and staff) from one academy trust to another." Where a private finance initiative (PFI) contract exists, it "will need to be transferred to the incoming trust" and should be novated "on the existing terms". That contract may govern maintenance of the very buildings you are surveying.

Whichever route applies, the estate items a trust can take on include:

• a backlog of condition need, some visible and some hidden behind finishes or above ceilings;

• gaps in compliance records, such as an out-of-date asbestos register or a missing fire risk assessment;

• building works still in progress, and the question of who pays to finish them;

• completed or live CIF projects and any loans attached to them;

• shared facilities, such as a sports hall let to outside groups, and the agreements behind them;

• leases, licences and service contracts tied to the site.

What the official guidance asks of the incoming trust

For a move between trusts, the DfE's information note on academy transfers is direct. "Due diligence should be undertaken by the incoming trust to understand the academy's position." The outgoing trust "must cooperate and provide all the information requested." The incoming trust must then confirm to the DfE that due diligence is complete and that it is aware of "any ongoing issues and outstanding liabilities", which may include "outstanding or completed Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) or Urgent Capital Support (UCS) projects and their associated commitments such as loans".

The timetable is tight. In intervention cases "the expectation is that due diligence should take around one month". Once a transfer is approved, the DfE "aims to complete the transfer process within 6 months for straightforward cases." The outgoing trust's land transfer form "should be done 2 months before the date of transfer." A survey commissioned late arrives after the decision it was meant to inform.

For conversions, the DfE's guidance on transferring responsibilities to the academy trust puts two estate protections in writing. Where building works will finish after conversion, an agreement "must clarify who will pay for completing works and make sure that unfunded liabilities don't pass to your academy trust after you convert." The school must also confirm "that the final agreement does not transfer any additional liabilities to the academy trust." Loans have to be declared, because "DfE will have to approve the transfer of responsibility for the loan".

Neither document says how to survey the buildings. That is left to the trust, and it is where most of the financial exposure sits.

What building and condition checks should a trust do before a school joins?

Start with what the school already holds. The DfE's Condition Data Collection 2 (CDC2) programme set out to visit "every government-funded school in England" between 2021 and 2026, so ask for the school's report. It is a fair baseline. The DfE is plain about its limits, though: the data "is not invasive (only visible condition is inspected)", "is not structural" and "does not report on hazardous materials (principally asbestos)". It also "does not provide descriptions of defects and remedies or cost information for schools or responsible bodies".

Costs, remedies and hidden risks are exactly what a board needs before it votes. A survey scoped for a school joining a trust should cover:

• Fabric and structure. Roofs, walls, windows and floors, graded by condition and priority, with an order of cost for each item over a five-year horizon.

• Mechanical and electrical services. Heating plant, pipework, electrical installations and their test certificates. Plant near the end of its life is often the largest single cost in the report.

• Hazardous materials and structural concerns. The asbestos register and management plan, and the school's records on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

• Compliance records. Fire, water hygiene, gas, lifting equipment and electrical testing. A missing record is a finding in its own right.

• Capital projects, past and live. What was funded, what was built, what remains unfinished and any loan repayments still running.

• Suitability and space. Only where the trust plans to grow the school or change its use; otherwise leave it out of scope and keep the fee down.

RAAC deserves its own line in the board paper. The DfE says it is "providing support for schools and colleges with confirmed RAAC", and that "This targeted support is in addition to any SCA or funding through CIF". A confirmed case changes the funding picture, not only the cost. The DfE's managing asbestos guidance, linked from the same page, is the reference for checking whether the school's arrangements are sound.

Where the survey finds asbestos or RAAC, our guide to what CIF will and will not pay for on asbestos and RAAC explains how each is treated for funding.

Every inherited risk should end up as a line with a cost range and a timescale. That is what turns a survey into something a finance committee can use.

Sizing the survey to the decision

Not every school needs a full intrusive survey before the board votes. A proportionate approach works in stages, and each stage is commissioned only if the one before it leaves a question open.

• Desk review. The national condition report, asbestos register, compliance certificates, previous condition surveys, capital project files and the land documents. This shows where the gaps are and costs little.

• Walk-round inspection. A surveyor visits to confirm the desk findings, grade the main elements and flag anything that needs a specialist.

• Targeted investigation. Only where the first two stages show a real risk: roof cores, a drainage camera survey, an asbestos survey ahead of planned works, or a structural engineer on a suspect frame.

The walk-round is usually enough to put a cost range in front of the board. Targeted investigation is for the items where that range is too wide to decide on. A Victorian school with one later extension needs a different scope from a post-war system-built campus with flat roofs, and the scope document should say why it includes what it does.

Agree the reporting format with the surveyor before the visit: a grading and priority format that a later funding bid can reuse can save commissioning a second survey. The surveyor guide linked at the top of this article sets out the survey rules CIF applies.

Where the findings go after the board decides

Joining a trust can change how the school's condition work is paid for. The DfE's school capital funding guidance explains that larger trusts receive School Condition Allocation (SCA) to spend across their schools, while schools in smaller trusts bid into the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF). For the 2026 to 2027 financial year, a trust needed "5 or more open schools at the start of September 2025" and "at least 3,000 pupils counted in the spring 2025 census" to qualify for SCA. For special and alternative-provision schools, the DfE says "we multiply the pupil count by 4.5". A school joining may carry your trust across that line or leave it just below, so model both cases. The DfE's own warning applies: "Eligibility should not be assumed unless it has been confirmed."

A converting school can also be caught mid-round. For 2026 to 2027, "Schools that had an academy order at the start of September 2025 that we expected to convert into a CIF eligible trust by 1 April 2026 were also invited to apply to CIF". If the joining school sits in that position, the survey you commission for due diligence may be the evidence for its first bid.

If your trust receives SCA, the school's needs join the trust-wide priority list instead. Our guide to how academy trusts should prioritise School Condition Allocation covers how to rank them against the rest of the estate.

For the longer view across every school, our guide to estate masterplanning for a multi-academy trust shows how those lists become one costed plan.

The findings also belong in the estate plan. The DfE expects "bodies responsible for schools to manage their school estate strategically and maintain their estate in a safe working condition." A due diligence survey that is graded, costed and phased can go straight into the trust's five-year plan, which is the subject of the five-year plan guide linked above.

Related guides

• School Estate Management Standards: what the annual return will ask trusts to show

• What governors should check before approving a school building project

• CIF, SCA and urgent capital support: which one applies to your school?

Condition due diligence at Grayling Thomas Architects

Grayling Thomas Architects is a RIBA Chartered Practice that designs and delivers school buildings, and carries out school condition surveys and other education surveys, including due diligence surveys. In those, the practice's "chartered building surveyors and engineers conduct thorough assessments of existing properties, evaluating structural integrity, cladding, and electrical/ mechanical systems to identify risks and opportunities". Where a board date is close, the practice can offer "a concise version of a condition survey which gives a quicker response time" than the full survey. Condition surveys are carried out by "fully DBS-qualified surveyors", which matters when the school is open during the visit.

The practice was CIF bid writer, lead consultant and architect for Dorothy Goodman School in Hinckley, a new building for an existing special school, funded through the Condition Improvement Fund. That experience of how condition evidence turns into funded work shapes how we scope a survey for a trust.

If a school is due to join your trust, we can scope the survey to the decision your board faces and the time you have before it. Contact Grayling Thomas Architects to talk it through.