Trust leaders have told of their frustration after they were sent an email in error by the Department for Education (DfE) informing them that they were eligible for school building funding.
The DfE sent some trusts an email before 3pm yesterday telling them they were eligible to apply for the 2024-25 school condition allocation (SCA).
But just before 7pm, the DfE emailed again to apologise and inform trusts that they had been told they were eligible by mistake.
Rather than the SCA, the trusts affected are actually eligible to bid for the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF). It is not yet known how many trusts were emailed in error.
SCA is funding that is given directly to larger academy trusts and councils.
Vic Goddard, co-principal at Passmores Academy in Essex and trust chief executive, told Tes: “As a trust that is growing I received this and thought that this was recognising that.
“Like lots of trusts in Essex - the home of RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) - the state of the buildings is very high on our list of worries and it felt, for a few hours at least, we had a chance to invest in the school estate rather than just stick plasters over stuff.”
The CIF process is becoming such an unlikely source of funding as so many apply and relatively few are successful, Mr Goddard said.
“Once again, the quality of service we receive from the DfE fails to meet the most basic of standards and it feels like one thing after another just when we are all working so hard for our communities,” he said.
“Tired leaders at the end of a busy half term are once again left feeling deflated.”
Mr Goddard also posted on Twitter about the mistake, where several other trust leaders replied saying they had also been affected.
The apology email from the DfE’s capital allocations team read: “We appreciate the time and effort that goes into planning CIF bids and making plans for SCA and are sorry for the confusion this may have caused today.”
The SCA is available to local authorities and larger multi-academy trusts (MATs) with five schools or more and at least 3,000 pupils.
DfE guidance says local authorities, larger MATs and larger voluntary-aided (VA) school bodies receive direct SCA to invest in priorities across the schools for which they are responsible.
Schools in smaller academy trusts, smaller VA bodies and sixth-form colleges are instead able to bid for the Condition Improvement Fund.
Guidance adds: “If a school has been invited to bid for CIF in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, their responsible body will not receive any SCA funding on their behalf.”
This latest error comes just two weeks after the DfE revealed an error had made in the allocations of funding for 2024-25 through the national funding formula.
Tes revealed last year that many schools were having trouble getting any money through the CIF. As of last year, in excess of 400 schools had had more than three CIF applications rejected since 2016.
The DfE has been contacted for comment.
