Review of the UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy Key Takeaways for the Education Estate

Overview

The UK government’s 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy sets out £725 billion of investment over the next decade to coordinate infrastructure planning across public and private sectors. It aims to deliver long-term certainty, improve efficiency, and provide value for money.

For the education estate, the strategy presents ambitious intentions but largely continues existing approaches—particularly around rebuilding programmes and maintenance.

This review summarises the main areas of relevance for education estates. It welcomes the focus on strategic estate planning and sustained maintenance funding, while questioning whether expanding the rebuilding programme truly aligns with the strategy’s overarching objectives.

Aim of the 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy:

Align economic, social, and housing infrastructure under a single, long-term national plan.
Provide certainty through ten-year funding commitments to attract investment and improve productivity.
Prioritise sustainable, long-term maintenance funding in line with National Audit Office recommendations.
Take a strategic, data-led approach to align investment with need.
Support joined-up decision-making between social and private infrastructure projects.
Share best practice across government, including the Department for Education’s (DfE) standardised designs and data-collection methods.

Oversight and Governance

The newly established National Infrastructure and Social Transformation Agency (NISTA)—formed by merging the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) and the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA)—will oversee delivery of the strategy. Reporting to HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office, NISTA has been granted powers to drive improvement across policy, projects, and systems, working closely with industry and government departments to embed best practice in delivery.

Key Headlines for Education:

Capital Funding

Total education capital investment (2025–26 to 2029–30): £38 billion, including:

£20 billion to continue and expand the School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) to 2034–35.
£12.4 billion for school and college maintenance, rising to £3 billion per year by 2034–35.
£370 million for expanding school-based nurseries.
£2.6 billion for mainstream school-place provision (Basic Need allocations).
£700 million for High Needs provision (2025–26).
£80 million to deliver 10 Technical Excellence Colleges.
£370 million to support post-16 capacity (further details to follow).

Why it matters: The investment provides welcome stability but reflects continuity rather than transformation in capital policy.

School Rebuilding Programme (SRP): Expanded but Limited

£20 billion commitment from 2025–26 to 2034–35.
Covers 500 schools already announced, with 250 additional schools to be added over two years.
Positioned as a response to “urgent condition need” in the school estate fifteen years on from the cancellation of Building Schools for the Future (BSF).
Regarded as a stable pipeline of standardised, net-zero-carbon projects.
A new construction framework currently in procurement by the DfE will emphasise quality, social value, and apprenticeships.

However, the SRP will still reach only around 3 percent of schools—highlighting a gap between aspiration and scale.

Maintenance: A More Strategic Approach

Acknowledges historic underinvestment and large maintenance backlogs.
Commits £2.4 billion in 2025–26 for education, rising to £2.9 billion by 2034–35.
Supported by the Office of Government Property (OGP) and NISTA to embed long-term asset-management planning.
Unified ten-year maintenance strategies across departments to be operational from 2027.

This shift toward long-term funding commitments is positive but relies on this multi-year certainty being passed down to responsible bodies to drive significant improvement.

Clean Energy and Decarbonisation

Becoming a clean energy superpower by 2030 is one of the government’s five key missions and it is an integral part of the infrastructure strategy.
Great British Energy and Great British Energy - Nuclear will deliver this agenda, backed by £8.3 billion over the Spending Review period.
Marks a shift away from centrally funded schemes like the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), towards leveraging the public estate for clean energy generation.
With over 55 million m² of roof area, the education estate is a key focus. The DfE has so far partnered with Great British Energy to install solar panels on 200 schools, with further expansion anticipated.
Despite this shift, it is recognised that: “much of the public estate is not energy efficient, often relying on inefficient fossil fuel heating systems” but funding routes for large scale decarbonisation of the school estate remains unclear.
The DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy (2022) is referenced, confirming continued commitment but without new resources to deliver it.
Deyes High School in Merseyside is cited for taking an exemplary approach to sustainability with “a sustainable drainage system, solar panels, heat pumps, enhanced wall, floor and roof thermal performance and natural ventilation.” The strategy does not mention this was achieved following £36 million from the SRP, a scale of investment few schools can access.

The current change in focus from centrally funded decarbonisation initiatives to energy generation without an update to the sustainability targets, as set out in the 2022 strategy, leaves the sector held to commitments it cannot afford or reach on its own.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP)

The government may selectively deploy new PPP models for decarbonisation projects, with decisions due in the Autumn Budget 2025.
Confirms no return to legacy PFI/PF2 schemes but commits to applying lessons from them.
NISTA will continue managing 665 existing PFI contracts, with £136 billion in remaining payments—half expiring within the next decade.

It seems highly possible PPP models will be deployed to bridge the current funding gap for decarbonisation.

Housing strategy: implications for school places

The forthcoming Long-Term Housing Strategy will aim to deliver more new homes, requiring coordinated provision of schools and other local services. Local authorities will be expected to prepare and adopt local plans within 30 months, ensuring housing growth is matched by infrastructure, supported through Community Infrastructure Levy and Section 106 contributions.

Annual reports by the Housing Developer Federation suggest local authorities have large amounts of unspent housing developer contributions. Facilitating better, more transparent allocation could unlock significant funding for the school estate.

Overall Takeaway for the Education Estate

Admirable Intentions

The strategy’s ambition for coordinated long-term infrastructure planning is commendable. Its principles—data-driven decision-making, collaboration across departments, and alignment of investment with need—are sound and necessary.

Persistent Mismatch

Yet for education, the details suggest continuity more than transformation. The school estate remains listed as a major risk in the DfE’s annual report for the fourth year running. There is a mismatch between the strategy’s diagnosis and aims, and the solutions proposed for the education estate.

Aims:

Recognition of “urgent condition need it inherited in the school estate fifteen years after the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme.”
Objective to provide “safe and high-quality environments for children and young people in schools and colleges across England”.
Turnaround of the “soaring maintenance backlog which has left our schools, colleges, hospitals and courts in a state of disrepair.”

Proposed Solutions:

Expand a rebuilding programme that will reach only around 750 schools (≈3 percent of the total estate).
Offer moderate maintenance funding increases for the remainder supported by limited capital allocations to support pupil growth (basic need).
Tactical support of new government initiatives such as the school-based nursery capital grant, which is welcome but limited in reach.

Conclusion

The 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy represents progress in planning, integration, and commitment to maintenance. If implemented well, it could further empower responsible bodies to manage estates more strategically and align education with broader infrastructure priorities.

However, its most visible investment—the expanded School Rebuilding Programme—risks repeating old patterns: a centrally driven, high-profile scheme reaching a fraction of schools while the wider estate continues to age.

With constrained public finances and rising sustainability pressures, the next decade demands more than flagship projects—it calls for a more cost-effective approach to rebuilding the school estate which delivers a greater number of safe and high-quality environments for children and young people.