Applications have opened for colleges in England to apply for capital loans from the Department for Education, following reclassification into the public sector.
Bids can be submitted from today until midnight on May 31 for colleges to apply for loan funding to fill funding shortfalls for capital schemes in the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years.
The Office for National Statistics reclassified general FE colleges as public sector back in November, which resulted in many colleges having to put key campus projects on hold.
That was because funding rules introduced overnight by the DfE around managing public money said that commercial finance deals with would only be allowed by the government in rare circumstances, as it was deemed “very unlikely” by the department that higher private sector borrowing costs would be considered value for money.
