What is CIF Funding?
The Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) is a budget, created by the government, to help academic buildings remain in a good condition.
Each year schools, academies, and sixth form colleges bid for capital funding. Funding is given for projects such as heating, lighting and safeguarding. It is also used to support expansion projects where schools are over-subscribed.
The Condition Improvement Fund is there to help with significant requirements that are considered vital to the smooth running and safety of schools. Many of these projects would be too expensive for a school or multi-academy trust to bear alone.
What are the 3 stages of a CIF Application?

A current condition survey
We can carry out a survey to assess the current condition of your school, and what are your priority projects, prior to writing the bid.

Writing the bid
We write your bid free of charge, explaining the problem, what needs to be done, how much funding is needed and what the cost of not doing this work would be. This is fully costed and tendered to make sure it’s reflective of what you’ll be doing with the funding secured.

CIF outcomes and project delivery
We’ll manage the relationships with suppliers to make sure everything happens on-time and on-budget.
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WORK WITH US
If you’d like to partner with us for cost-efficient school building safety, compliance, and maintenance…
TOP 3 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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.
What makes us the perfect partner for your CIF application?
- Huge team of fully accredited and experienced surveyors
- Strategic approach to bid development and planning
- Access to innovative technology
- Enhanced DBS checks for all staff