Buildings and Estates
Our trust’s priority is to ensure that the facilities and fabric of all of our schools are maintained to a high standard to make sure that children and staff work in a pleasant and conducive environment for learning.
In the last seven years, £2.83 million has been invested in the improvements of our schools’ buildings and have included the following improvement works: new boilers, roofs, windows, fire doors, drainage systems, external safeguarding measures.
This is a vital part of the Trust's strategic plan to maintain our school buildings to a high standard.
Our key objectives of estate management are:
- Provide a health and safe working environment.
- Support schools’ improvement via developing the estates.
The way in which we can achieve the above is via the following:
Health and safety
The health and safety of our employees and pupils is paramount to ensuring we provide a pleasant and conducive environment for learning. From a building and estates perspective, we achieve this by scheduling health and safety site audits of our schools and actively planning how to respond and improve to any shortfalls in our estates. Following recommendations within the health and safety audits, we have made significant improvements to perimeter fencing and access control at a number of our sites and will continue to seek to improve the safeguarding of the remaining sites, taking into consideration staff and pupil health and safety.
Condition
Over the past decade, as a trust we have been committed to improving our estates via sourcing funding to undertake condition improvement related projects. We continue to work in conjunction with property consultants and commission condition surveys which provide us with maintenance programmes which are analysed and used in order to maintain and improve the estates, taking into consideration defects identified and asset lifespans. We understand the importance the condition of the estate has on the ability to create a conducive environment for learning, and we will continue to maintain and improve our estates using this strategic approach.
Sustainability
Yorkshire Collaborative Academy Trust understands its responsibility and the importance of creating a sustainable and environmentally friendly way of living, both in the performance of our buildings and also via the attitude and behaviours we aim to educate through our curriculum. The Trust understands and recognises the UK Government’s Net-Zero deadline by 2050 and we are committed to achieve this via building and technology improvements and behaviours.
In line with our estate’s strategy, we aim to understand the thermal performance and carbon footprints of all our estates by 2024 and implement plans to reduce carbon production via a strategic approach targeting projects which will achieve the most considerable reductions first. We understand that building fabric and heating systems have a significant impact on the thermal performance of a building and ensure that any improvements made to the estates are done so considering the most environmentally friendly solutions.
