The government has finally revealed the funding allocation of the additional £302m including the purposes for the funding. You can find details of it in FE news here and the actual guidance from government can be found here.
Although colleges in our region will receive a proportion of the additional allocation, the government guidance makes it clear that the money can only be spent on capital expenditure and the purpose of it is to help rebuild the FE estate. That means that the money is not intended to be used on staff pay. The guidance explicitly states:
“Funding should not be used for non-capital expenditure. This includes but is not limited to:
• rent or service charges
• internal and external staffing costs
• recoverable VAT costs incurred
• advertising, marketing, communications or consultancy
• development or updating of websites”
If you have any comments, please add on. Yes, say what you think, but say it to all of us. We need to constantly talk to each other. This is what a true union is.