What governors should check before approving a school building project

By Grayling Thomas Architects · November 2026

Before approving a capital building project, governors and trustees should see evidence on eight things: the need, backed by an up-to-date condition survey; the options considered and why one was chosen; a cost plan with a contingency; confirmed funding; the procurement route; how the board will meet its duties as client under The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM); the risks; and a realistic timetable. If any of those is missing from the board paper, the project is not ready for a yes.

This guide is for the chair of governors or trust board member with a paper in front of them and a vote coming. It sets out what the Department for Education (DfE) expects of boards on the estate, what to ask for under each heading, and the signs that a project needs more work first.

What should governors check before approving a capital project?

At the approval gate the board's task is narrow: to be satisfied that the decision is well founded, affordable and safe to deliver. Officers and consultants do the design. The board tests the case.

A working checklist for the meeting:

What the governance guides expect of the board

The DfE's governance guides set the frame. The academy trust governance guide says "We expect academies and responsible bodies to manage their trust estate strategically" and to keep that estate safe, suitable, sustainable and a suitable size. On buildings it uses the language of duty: "Boards must ensure that buildings: provide a safe environment for children, staff and visitors" and comply with regulations including health and safety, fire safety and the control and management of asbestos.

The maintained schools governance guide places the same duties on governing bodies, and expects them to "have up-to-date information about the condition of their buildings and a prioritised plan for managing them."

That phrase is the first test for any capital paper. A project should come out of the prioritised plan. If it is not there, the paper should explain what has changed.

The DfE's school estate management standards turn this into practice. At the baseline level, which every school is expected to reach, "A governing board is in place, and it maintains oversight of the estate." The estate strategy and asset management plan "will be reviewed, approved and signed off by the governing body, trustees or landowners." The strategy itself "outlines how you plan to invest in the estate over the next 3-5 years".

What a trust will need to confirm against those standards each year is covered in our guide to what the School Estate Management Standards annual return will ask trusts to show.

Two more baseline points matter at approval. Boards should know the terms on which the school occupies its site and "understand what approvals you may require for any capital works", securing "the landowner's permission to carry out any works" where needed. On church school sites, the guides note that charitable site trustees are significant landowners, so their consent may be part of the critical path. The standards also say the annual skills assessment "should include detail of skills and expertise in estates management." A board without that expertise should say so and buy in independent advice before the vote, not after.

Need and condition evidence

The first question is why this project, and why now. The standards expect a school to "understand the condition of all the land and buildings in the estate and the cost and priority of any works needed identified through an up-to-date building condition survey." Ask for the survey itself, its date and its author, and check that the project fixes the items the survey ranks highest. The governance guide also points boards to the DfE's Condition Data Collection 2 (CDC2) programme and the school condition report it produces, which makes a useful cross-check.

Condition is only half of need. A sound building can still be too small or wrong for the pupils it now serves. The standards ask schools to assess "whether the estate and its facilities are fit for purpose and whether the estate has the right amount of space for the number of school places." Where the case rests on places or SEND provision, ask for the pupil numbers and the area standard the design is measured against.

Options, cost plan and contingency

A paper that shows one option has already made the decision for the board. Ask to see the alternatives, including doing the minimum, each with a cost and a view of what it leaves unsolved. Our guide to the costed options appraisal that CIF bids now require shows how one is built, and the same discipline helps any capital decision whatever the funding.

The cost plan should say which design stage it reflects, what it includes and what it leaves out. Fees, surveys, furniture and equipment, temporary accommodation and irrecoverable VAT are the usual omissions. Contingency belongs on its own line, larger while the design is young. Check who may spend it and how its use comes back to the board.

Ask about running costs as well. The standards' advanced level expects boards to "consider the revenue implications of any short-, medium- and long-term investment." Maintenance, energy and cleaning outlast the build by decades.

Funding confirmed, not expected

Approve against money that is confirmed in writing, and read its conditions, which often bind scope, procurement and timing. The governance guides list the main capital routes: School Condition Allocation (SCA), devolved formula capital, the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF), basic need allocations and high needs provision capital allocations. Which applies depends on the size and type of the responsible body.

Voluntary-aided schools carry a share themselves. The maintained schools guide says legislation limits the Secretary of State's capital grants "to 90% of costs unless the Secretary of State for Education decides exceptional circumstances apply". It adds that "Local authorities can help governing bodies with their 10% contribution, subject to their own budget." The governing body's share needs a named source before work starts.

Where the funding is a bid not yet decided, the decision in front of the board is a different one: whether to spend at risk on surveys and design to make the bid. That can be the right call. It should be presented as that decision, with a cap on the spend.

Procurement route and the team

The standards expect schools to "ensure regularity, propriety and value for money when procuring goods and services for estate management", and at the next level to "carry out the necessary due diligence when engaging a contractor." The paper should name the route, whether a framework, an open tender or design and build, and say why it fits the size and risk of the job. Ask how the designers were appointed, too. Our guide on choosing an architect for a school capital project covers that selection.

Is the board the client under CDM?

In practice, yes. The school or trust that commissions the work is the client, and the standards expect it to "know your duties as a client" under CDM. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says client duties apply in full to commercial clients, and that the commercial client "has contractual control, appoints designers and contractors, and determines the money, time and other resources for the project."

Our guide to a school's CDM 2015 duties as client explains what each duty means in a school and who usually carries it.

Those duties include:

• appointing designers and contractors, "including the principal designer and principal contractor on projects involving more than one contractor", and making sure they have the skills, knowledge, experience and organisational capability;

• "allowing sufficient time and resources for each stage of the project";

• providing pre-construction information to every designer and contractor;

• making sure a construction phase plan is prepared before that phase begins, and that the principal designer prepares a health and safety file.

Larger jobs must be notified to HSE in writing. A project is notifiable where construction work "will last longer than 30 working days and involves more than 20 workers at any one time; or where the work exceeds 500 individual worker days".

On a school site, pre-construction information should draw on the asbestos register, which the standards expect to be based on an up-to-date management survey and reviewed annually. Designers must "make sure the client is aware of the client duties under CDM 2015 before starting any design work." If nobody has briefed the board on its duties, ask why. And watch the programme: squeezing works into one holiday to save money can cut straight across the duty to allow sufficient time.

What are the red flags in a capital project paper?

• Only one option is shown, or the alternatives exist to be rejected.

• The condition survey is old, was written by someone hoping to carry out the works, or does not cover the elements being replaced.

• There is no contingency, or the contingency has been trimmed to make the total fit the budget.

• Funding is described as "expected" or "likely", yet approval is sought for the full contract.

• There is no named principal designer, or health and safety is described as the contractor's job.

• The programme assumes planning permission, landowner consent or a funding decision by a date nobody controls.

• The project is missing from the estate strategy and asset management plan, and nothing explains why.

• Running and maintenance costs are not mentioned.

• The board is asked to approve at the same meeting it first sees the paper, with a deadline as the reason.

Two projects, two kinds of approval

Grayling Thomas Architects 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. It was completed in September 2018. The project page describes "a multimillion-pound SEND facility for pupils aged 11-16" and puts the funding case down to "thorough condition survey evidence, combined with clear educational need articulation and compliant technical specifications". That is the board's first gate in practice: condition and need, evidenced together. The move to a new site also "required careful ecological assessment", and the lighting and landscaping design "protected existing bat populations". A board approving a scheme on new land should expect ecology, planning and landowner questions in the risk register from the first paper.

Chalk Hill SEN School shows a different decision. The practice submitted it "for a detailed planning application which involves the expansion of the current site to include teaching and residential accommodation for the additional pupil intake", and "The project is part of a CIF bid with the Department for Education." The school is set to accommodate "pupils aged 8-14". Its new accommodation includes "A 180m² school hall" alongside classrooms, specialist spaces and residential bedrooms. A board in that position is approving design and planning spend before the funding is known. That paper needs a cap on spend at risk, a clear account of what the work is worth if the bid fails, and the point at which the board decides again.

Related guides

• Estate masterplanning for a multi-academy trust: from condition data to a ten-year plan

• From school condition assessment to a five-year plan: turning survey findings into costed priorities

• Building work on a live school site: phasing, safeguarding and keeping teaching going

Capital project approval support at Grayling Thomas Architects

Grayling Thomas Architects is a RIBA Chartered Practice in Chipping Norton that designs and delivers school and SEN buildings. We prepare the evidence a board needs before it votes: school condition surveys and other education surveys to establish the need, and school and estate masterplanning to place a project inside a long-term plan for the estate. From there we set out options, costs and programme in a form governors can test.

To talk through a project before it reaches your board, contact Grayling Thomas Architects.