We’re specialists in securing funding to keep school buildings safe and in good working order.

CIF is the acronym for Condition Improvement Fund and is a yearly bidding round for academies, multi-academy trusts and sixth form colleges for capital project funding. It was created to assist in ensuring school, college and trust buildings remain safe, secure and in good condition. It is also used to support a number of expansion projects where schools are over subscribed and are rated Outstanding or Good by Ofsted.

Read the Government’s Guidance on Condition Improvement Funding.

Condition Improvement Fund is important because it ensures that school buildings are kept in a safe and working condition. It addresses significant requirements for improvement which are vitally important to the smooth running and safety of schools. This includes keeping them warm (heating, windows, roofing), dry (roofing, windows) and safe (fire safety, asbestos removal, safeguarding the perimeter, M&E). Much of the costs of these projects would be too high for a school or multi-academy trust to bear alone.

Eligibility for CIF funding is only formally announced in October of the year of the funding round but is generally any school or multi-academy trust with under 3000 pupils and under 5 schools. Trusts who meet one of these criteria but not the other can still apply. There are different criteria for special schools; each pupil counts for 4.5 pupils rather than just 1.

Numbers of pupils are based on the figures at the Spring census of that year.  Schools who have not yet converted but who have a signed academy order by the 1st September in the year of application can apply, on condition that they convert by the 1st April following.

More recently non-diocesan Voluntary Aided (VA) schools have also been included in the eligibility rules for CIF.