Government to tie school PFI payments to stricter environmental standards, according to press reports

Industry publication Building said that the Government was planning to introduce "post-occupancy checks on energy use" as part of its proposed new Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP). It quoted an insider who said that "if environmental performance of the new building doesn't meet the required standard, they will be paid less".

The website recently published a leaked post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of schools built under the previous government, commissioned by the Department for Education, which showed that only one of the 25 schools evaluated met the required PFI benchmark.

Building said that the surveyed schools were using an average of 280% more energy than that recommended by Department for Education benchmarks. Those schools also held an average display energy performance certificate rating of D despite the fact that the energy efficiency requirement contained as part of their PFI contracts was the equivalent of a B rating.

Infrastructure law expert Jon Hart of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that it remained to be seen how sustainability elements would be built into the "no-frills attached standardised designs" suggested by the PSBP, which will ultimately replace the now-abandoned Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme. "No doubt the relevant specialists will be paying close attention to these designs to see how well they tick the boxes for sustainability, once the Priority Schools Programme manifests itself," he said.

"Separating the legal realities between aspirations at bid stage, and hard-edged commitments once work has started on site - and indeed, been long completed - is not a new problem and is certainly not unique to the education sector," he said. "For all its myriad criticisms, the standard form legal wording of BSF did provide a combination of stick and carrot, with the emphasis on the former, for a PFI contractor to make sure new schools were built to the right sustainable standards. Typical payment mechanisms provide some sharp teeth where energy efficiency levels aren't achieved once a school has been handed over.

The problem, he said, was ensuring that those living with the contracts understood, complied with and properly administered their contractual requirements.

The POE report, published by Building, rated nine of the 25 schools "unsatisfactory" in terms of sustainability. 10 rated as a "pass" while the remaining six were ranked "very good". An analysis of the schools' energy consumption showed that most were performing poorly against benchmarks, particularly those in relation to heating.

"This is worrying as it is the reverse trend of what has been seen recently in schools with low energy consumption where the heating component plays a much smaller part of the total energy consumption due to better performance of the building fabric and seasonal control of the heating system," the leaked POE said.

The Government announced the end of the BSF programme and the beginning of a comprehensive review of all capital investment in schools, early years, colleges and sixth forms in July 2010. A spokesman for the Department for Education told Out-Law.com that the Government was due to present the results of this review "shortly".