Building Condition Surveys

This blog is the fourth in a series focussing on the DfE’s School Estate Management Standards (published April 2025) Level 1 Baseline requirements which all schools are expected to have achieved.  The extract from the Standards below states the information that schools should have regarding the condition of their buildings.

Area	Activities
Understanding and managing your land and buildings	You understand the condition of all the land and buildings in the estate and the cost and priority of any works needed identified through an up-to-date building condition survey.

In February the Department for Education (DfE) issued a document entitled Condition surveys for school and college buildings: guidance for responsible bodies, together with a standard condition survey template.  If you haven’t had a building condition survey carried out previously then where do you start?

What is and what isn’t a building condition survey?

A building condition survey is a detailed inspection of your buildings carried out by a qualified building surveyor at the expense of your Responsible Body.  What isn’t a building condition survey is the DfE’s Condition Data Collection (CDC) reports.  The CDC reports were carried out by the Government to obtain a high-level assessment of the physical state of school and college buildings in England. 

A structural survey isn’t a building condition survey either.  It’s a detailed, in-depth inspection of a building’s structure integrity focussing on key elements such as foundations, walls and roofs and must be carried out by a structural engineer.  So, if you’ve got a collapsing roof, you need a structural engineer, but if you’re trying to accurately predict what future work will be required to keep your buildings in good condition, then it’s a building condition survey that you need.

What’s included in a building condition survey?

The DfE’s document mentioned above states that, “A condition survey will usually identify specific building condition issues, deficiencies and maintenance requirements, including:

• Roofs.
• Floors and stairs.
• Ceilings.
• External walls, windows and doors.
• Internal walls and doors.
• Sanitary ware.
• Mechanical services.
• Electrical services.
• redecorations.”

Although be aware that you should explicitly check that mechanical and electrical services are included in your building condition survey as these will need to be carried out by a mechanical and electrical engineer, so there may be an additional charge.

You should also check with your professional building consultants when commissioning a survey that their report will be issued in the new DfE standard condition survey format.  The template can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/commissioning-a-condition-survey-for-school-and-college-buildings

For each element that is examined (as per the list above) a condition rating is given.  The DfE has adopted a condition assessment system based on the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors’ rating system as set out below.

Rating	Explanation	Description
A	Good	Performing as intended and operating efficiently
B	Satisfactory	Performing as intended but exhibiting minor deterioration
C	Poor	Exhibiting major defects and/or not operating as intended
D	Bad	Life expired and/or serious risk of imminent failure
X		Full replacement required

Priority	Explanation	Description
1	Urgent	Immediate remedial action required – this is the default priority rating for condition D
2	Essential	Remedial action required in 1 to 2 years
3	Desirable	Remedial action required in 3 to 5 years
4	Long term	Outside of a 5-year planning period – this is the default priority rating for condition A

Your building condition report will allocate a rating and a priority to each element.  Any plant equipment rated X1 or D1 requires immediate action.

How and when to commission a building condition survey

When choosing a professional building consultancy to carry out your building condition survey, ensure they are registered with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and that they have experience of carrying out building condition surveys in schools.  Building condition surveys should be carried at least every 5 years.  Responsible Bodies should be aware that the DfE will not be carrying out any future Condition Data Collection surveys (and, as mentioned above, these are only high-level reports anyway), but it will be expecting schools and colleges to carry out their own building condition surveys.  In future these should be uploaded to your DfE Manage your education estate portal (accessed via your DfE Sign in account) to enable the DfE to have direct access to your building condition data.

How to use your building condition survey

Once you’ve received your building condition survey report in the DfE’s spreadsheet format, you can then apply filters to the columns to identify those with XI, D1 and C2 ratings.  You should then prioritise within each of those categories what action and investment are required.  For example, if your gas boiler has received an X1 rating meaning that it requires immediate replacement, this should be top of your list of priorities.  Not least because should your boiler fail in the middle of winter, this could result in school closure.

Your building condition survey should also inform planned replacement of plant and equipment as well as regular maintenance activities, such as redecoration.  Hence, the building condition survey is a valuable tool for forecasting budget requirements over the next 5 years to ensure a proactive rather than reactive approach.  Of course, a crucial element of the survey’s usefulness is to ensure that it is updated with any works that are carried out as your survey may have hundreds of lines of data making it impossible to remember when works have been carried out. 

Finally, whilst building condition surveys are an additional expense for schools, they are also the building blocks of effective estate maintenance and planning and should be viewed as an investment in your school’s future.

References

• Condition surveys for school and college buildings: guidance for responsible bodies and the Standard condition survey template: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/commissioning-a-condition-survey-for-school-and-college-buildings
• Manage your education estate portal: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/manage-your-education-estate

Previous Articles In This Series

1. https://www.thetrustnetwork.org.uk/2025/11/07/the-importance-of-asset-management-plans/
2. https://www.thetrustnetwork.org.uk/2025/12/15/budgeting-for-the-school-estate/
3. https://www.thetrustnetwork.org.uk/2026/01/20/the-importance-of-building-information/