Munday + Cramer’s Successful 2020 CIF Bid Applications

The application outcomes for this year’s Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) bids were announced this week. Up and down the country, schools and academies, alike, will have been awaiting this news with bated breath. Munday + Cramer has the great pleasure of announcing that they’ve successfully secured around £20 million in funding from this year’s Condition Improvement Fund.

This comprises £9.8 million for Essex-based academies, £5.3 million across Buckinghamshire schools and £2.3 million across the county of Kent. Munday + Cramer also successfully secured bid applications in London and Bedfordshire, as well. The funding that we’ve secured will be making its way to almost 50 schools and academies across these various regions. This will help enable the delivery of crucial construction and repair works. Such changes have a real and tangible impact on both a school’s pupils and its staff. They help create, amongst other things, better and safer learning and teaching conditions.

What Is CIF Funding Used For?

The schools which have successfully been granted CIF funding can use the money in various ways. The purpose will already have been made clear during the CIF bid application, itself. Generally, however, it will be used for a form of structural repair work or some other kind of condition improvement. The funding is also used to undertake critical health and safety improvements. CIF funding is used for the following:

• Fire safety improvement works
• Kitchen refurbishments
• Water distribution
• Safeguarding
• Electrical rewiring

Following on from the bid development and the design work, itself, this highly sought-after fund requires an extensive and detailed tender process to be carried out. For several months’ worth of hard work and meticulous planning to be so well-rewarded, offers a sense of huge validation to both the academies which have been successful, and to ourselves, as a practice.

Knowing that academies that are in dire need of work (in some form or another) are going to be able to carry out the work they require, makes all the hard work worthwhile.

What Munday + Cramer Has To Say About The Announcements

We spoke to Lee Hatwell, director of Munday + Cramer, about the announcements. Here’s what he had to say:

“We’re incredibly pleased to have secured this funding for so many schools. CIF is critical in allowing academies to keep the standards of their buildings up to scratch. We’re very much looking forward to assisting with these projects.”

The decision made by Munday + Cramer, as a firm, to pursue more heavily this area of work (which extends beyond CIF to other key grants and schemes, Salix Loans, for instance) has been paying off over the past few years. We intend to continue pushing into the future, aiming to deliver necessary funding to as many deserving academies as possible.

Appeals Process

It’s worth noting that for as many schools that have been successful with their bids, a far greater number will have had their applications turned down. This, obviously, can be a very bitter pill to swallow. For these schools and academies, however, all hope is not lost. The Condition Improvement Fund features an appeals process in which unsuccessful bids can be reviewed. Munday + Cramer would be more than happy to review an academy’s unsuccessful bid, with the hope of turning it around for a successful appeal come September time.

2021 CIF Funding Applications

The treadmill never stops in the world of Government funding, and as by the time one set of funding has been announced, applications for the next year’s round of funding has almost crept up on you. On the topic, Lee Hatwell had this to say:

“We’re excited to help even more facilities bid for 2021 CIF funding when applications open this September.”

If you’d like to find out about the Condition Improvement Fund, and other funds, in greater detail, then read our blog on the topic here!

Contact Us

So, if you’d like to find out more about Munday + Cramer’s work in CIF bid applications, then get in touch! We’re at the forefront of funding application work, monitoring the ever-changing requirements and Government-led stipulations of which such applications comprise. It’s especially important, given the year we’ve had, that moving forward you use a CIF funding firm that you can trust. Contact us today on 01245 326 200.