Britain’s schoolchildren are losing valuable teaching time because broken heating systems, faulty wiring and leaky roofs are forcing head teachers to close classrooms each winter, a leading building management and outsourcing company said today. 

MITIE Group PLC has urged local authorities to adopt a more strategic approach to building maintenance and improve schools’ infrastructure as schools reopen their doors after the Christmas holiday. 

Many of Britain’s schools were built in the 1950s and 1960s and use outmoded boilers and energy systems that are not only expensive and inefficient but are now operating beyond their original life expectancy. 

Many break down each winter as schools turn up the thermostats or keep them working for longer in freezing conditions. Meanwhile broken pipes and faulty electrics add to the problems schools face each winter. 

It is estimated there is a huge backlog of repairs, totalling billions of pounds, that has yet to be addressed in Britain’s schools. 

According to the Local Government Association (LGA), which lobbies on behalf of councils, nearly £5bn in capital investment is considered essential for the next financial year, 2011-12.
(http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=13875797)

The LGA says this money is essential in order to ensure every child can be taught in a classroom which is safe and structurally sound.

Local authorities and school heads are worried about how they will address these costs following the cancellation of the “Building Schools for the Future” programme in July 2010 and the budgetary pressures after last October’s Comprehensive Spending Review. 

Acknowledging the need to plan ahead, Secretary of State for Education, the Rt. Hon. Michael Gove, MP, stated in December that with reduced capital allocation, building and equipment maintenance is essential in order to reduce cost in the longer-term. 

MITIE, a FTSE 250 business, is urging local authorities to follow its lead in North Somerset (case study below) where it has worked with the local authority to upgrade the facilities of a number of schools.

It has introduced an improved maintenance regime and reinvested the extensive savings from energy savings and lower maintenance costs in upgrading the infrastructure. 

As a result the schools in the region have some of the best track records in the UK in terms of maintenance-related closures. 

Mike Sewell, director of MITIE’s CarbonCare programme said: “Britain’s schools have rightly focused on protecting core teaching budgets over the last few years but the result is that infrastructure investment has been neglected. This huge backlog of repairs means that our school infrastructure is in a spiral of decline. 

“Yet again we are likely to see a large number of schools closed because old equipment and systems won’t be able to cope under the pressure. Unfortunately many school days will be lost and the problem will get even worse over the next five years unless our infrastructure problems are addressed now.”

North Somerset Council case study 

North Somerset Council contacted MITIE in 2004 seeking advice on how to break the spiral of deteriorating assets and increasing maintenance costs in 80 schools in the region. 

Since then MITIE has focused on a strategic approach to the contract, with the aim of improving the maintenance regimes and using the savings made to upgrade the facilities. 

This has been delivered through a team of locally based, dedicated engineers which has improved maintenance regimes, ensured legislative compliance and introduced and continues to develop good energy management.

The approach has resulted in huge cost savings with some individual schools benefiting from a 30% fall in their energy bills.
These savings have been used by MITIE to invest in capital equipment such as lighting sensors, solar panels and advanced energy management software.
This investment in equipment, together with MITIE’s rigorous maintenance regime of existing assets, has combined to reduce bills further and greatly enhanced there reliability. The result is that zero school days have been lost due to broken infrastructure since MITIE took over.
Although North Somerset’s schools’ individual outgoings on maintenance and energy have remained stable, the savings generated from the partnership with MITIE has allowed them to benefit from upfront capital investment for improvements that would otherwise be financially impossible for the council. 

Mark McSweeney, Property Services Manager for North Somerset Council said: “The reality is that given the budgetary pressure schools are under we could not hope to make the capital investment that MITIE has made, which is why this partnership has been so beneficial to us.

“Since bringing MITIE on board the heating systems of schools in our council have been far more reliable during the cold winter months. 

“The improvements have helped us keep schools open in all weather and have made a real difference to the staff and pupils. Even better, the arrangement has enabled schools to focus resources on core teaching budgets. ”

-ENDS-

Notes for editors

What is MITIE?
We’re the strategic outsourcing company. What does that mean in practice? We manage facilities, properties and assets for our clients across the UK and beyond.

We work with our clients in three ways; some take full advantage of our whole range of expertise, others may only need one aspect of what we do:

Strategy and consultancy
+ Facilities and project management
+ Service delivery

Our strategic input can add value at the highest level by helping clients to manage their assets, while our practical management expertise can save customers money and reduce their carbon emissions. We work with a vast number of clients in every industry across both the public and private sectors and deliver the broadest range of services that can be found in one place: from integrated facilities management to engineering maintenance to lifecycle energy management and much more.

There’s a lot more to MITIE than you probably think. We’re a big company with big ambitions – a leading FTSE 250 support services business, with more than 56,000 people, revenues in excess of £1.7bn, and a reputation for being the best.

Visit us at www.mitie.com