The 10 Year Capital Plan confirms that we will continue providing targeted support to National Health Service trusts affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), with the aim of eradicating RAAC from the NHS estate by 2035. Over the next four years, we will eradicate RAAC from 22 hospitals and progress works at the remaining hospital sites to protect patients, staff, and the public, backed by £1.6 billion of investment. This includes targeted safety mitigations to keep the seven hospitals that are constructed wholly or primarily made from RAAC safe to operate until completion of their rebuilds as part of Wave 1 of the New Hospital Programme.

National Health Service trusts are responsible for managing their estates and maintaining their facilities within their agreed budgets. This includes refurbishing and replacing buildings in poor or very poor condition.

As set out in the Government’s 10 Year Capital Plan for Health and 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy, we are investing £65 billion in the day-to-day maintenance and repair of the NHS estate over the next decade. As part of this, NHS trusts will receive £15 billion in operational capital across 2026/27 to 2029/30, which they can assign to their local priorities, including the repair and renewal of their facilities and equipment.

The Estates Safety Fund will continue, investing £6.75 billion over the next nine years to tackle the poorest-quality NHS estate. NHS regions working with integrated care boards and NHS trusts are prioritising this funding between their organisations to deliver maximum safety benefits. Allocation processes are ongoing, and as such, the total number of planned replacement and refurbishment schemes is not yet confirmed.

As reiterated in our 10 Year Capital Plan, published on 8 July 2026, the Estates Safety Fund will be provided with £6.75 billion over the next nine years to tackle the poorest-quality National Health Service estate and ensure safe environments for healthcare delivery. This funding will be used both to address urgent operational risks and to deliver a number of larger strategic schemes, delivering significant reductions in critical infrastructure risk (CIR) and backlog maintenance.

To enable this, estates safety allocations are being made at a regional level, based on reported levels of CIR across the country and estates related incidents.

NHS regions working with integrated care boards and NHS trusts are prioritising this funding between their organisations to deliver maximum safety benefits. Allocation processes are ongoing, and as such, funding allocations for individual NHS trusts are not yet confirmed.

As reiterated in our 10 Year Capital Plan, published on 8 July 2026, the Estates Safety Fund will be provided with £6.75 billion over the next nine years to tackle the poorest-quality National Health Service estate and ensure safe environments for healthcare delivery. This funding will be used both to address urgent operational risks and to deliver a number of larger strategic schemes, delivering significant reductions in critical infrastructure risk (CIR) and backlog maintenance.

To enable this, estates safety allocations are being made at a regional level, based on reported levels of CIR across the country and estates related incidents.

NHS regions working with integrated care boards and NHS trusts are prioritising this funding between their organisations to deliver maximum safety benefits. Allocation processes are ongoing, and as such, funding allocations for individual NHS trusts are not yet confirmed.

The Government’s 10 Year Capital Plan for Health and Social Care, published on Wednesday 8 July, brings together the Government’s existing health capital commitments into a single framework aligned with the 10-Year Health Plan.

Capital funding allocations for specific programmes were confirmed through the 2025 Spending Review and subsequently set out in the 2026/27 to 2029/30 NHS Capital Guidance, which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/capital-guidance-2026-27-to-2029-30/

The guidance set out a new balance between national control and regional autonomy, giving regions a lead role in strategic estates planning and delivery oversight, with many capital funding allocations being made at a regional level. This gives increased scope for capital to be targeted at specific priority services according to local need.

We will be publishing our impact assessment, which will include the estimated carbon savings, alongside our government response in due course.

The savings from the three central London office closures relate to the annual property running costs. They have not been adjusted for any one-off transition, refit, or redundancy costs.

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry report made recommendations for reform relating to certain built environment professions, including regulation of fire engineers and mandatory accreditation of fire risk assessors. We have accepted these recommendations in full. We are aware of the importance of competence, accountability and good regulation to achieve a safer built environment and will continue to engage with the sector on this.

Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 requires that building safety risks in Higher Risk Buildings are assessed, managed and controlled.  The assessment must be suitable and sufficient and all reasonable steps must be taken to manage and control the building safety risks.  Along with the Building Safety Regulator we keep under review the operation of the Building Assessment Certificate regime to ensure appropriate management of risks in Higher Risk Buildings.

​​The government has set out its plans to permanently remove reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) from schools and colleges.

​By the end of this Parliament, every school and college in England that is not being fully or substantially rebuilt will be RAAC-free.

​Alongside this, every school needing to be rebuilt through the School Rebuilding Programme, will be in delivery, with half having started already.

It is the responsibility of those who run our schools, such as academy trusts and local authorities, to collect and record information about their buildings and to ensure they are safe, well-maintained and comply with relevant regulations. The department provides guidance on this in the ’Good estate management for schools’ guidance, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/good-estate-management-for-schools.

The department has undertaken extensive work to address risks associated with structural materials in the estate. We have removed Intergrid and Laingspan buildings and have committed to removing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or starting rebuilding schemes to replace affected buildings, by the end of this parliament.

The department is continuing this work through a £5 million research programme by leading material and engineering experts. This will identify if there are emerging structural safety risks in the post-war estate. We have regular discussions with relevant professional bodies and material specialists about evidence regarding the safety of construction types and materials.

The department works with the National Fire Chiefs Council to update national guidance and support fire and rescue services’ protection departments to enforce our fire safety laws effectively.

The department recently issued a guidance supplement updating guidance to enforcing authorities at Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005: enforcement - GOV.UK.

Fire and rescue authorities are required to have regard to this guidance in their enforcement approach, however specific enforcement decisions are based on the circumstances of each case.

If the building is below 18m in height (measured from ground level) and has fewer than 7 storeys, it should not be classed as higher-risk under the current regulatory framework. Importantly, storeys located below ground level - including non-residential basements or semi-basement garages - should not be counted when determining whether a building meets the higher-risk threshold. Therefore, such buildings should not be classed as higher-risk.

A comprehensive review of the higher-risk regime is scheduled for 2027, and the Building Safety Regulator is expected to publish its initial review and ongoing review by the end of summer 2025. These may address how impacts are assessed and inform future policy adjustments.

In the initial stages, a building control application is usually required for new buildings. This is reviewed by building control bodies to ensure compliance with building regulations.

During the build process, progress on site may be checked and monitored, using a number of methods, including on site visits, where the inspector may ask the builders on site to open up parts of the build in order to check compliance, and give advice if needed.

At the end of the build process, if a building complies with relevant regulations, a completion certificate will be issued.

Building control bodies conduct checks to assure building work or material changes of use are compliant with the building regulations. However, ultimately, it is the responsibility of the person carrying out the work (and, where appointed, the principal designer and principal contractor) to ensure building work complies with these requirements.

The higher-risk building regime fundamentally reforms the way higher-risk buildings are designed, built and managed. They change the building control process, and place new duties on accountable persons when these buildings are managed, to make sure that safety and performance of these buildings is considered right at the start of the design process and all the way through the building’s lifecycle.

The changes will reassure residents, mitigating negative mental health impacts arising from fears around safety or financial insecurities; reduce the risk of fire and structural incidents occurring; reduce the likelihood of systemic risks arising and the cost associated with putting them right; and provide confidence to the insurance and mortgage market.

It is worth noting that the regime has only introduced new procedural requirements for dutyholders to robustly demonstrate how their projects will meet compliance. The functional requirements under the building regulations with which dutyholders need to comply remain the same as under the previous regime.

We do recognise that these new procedural requirements in the regime may result in some additional costs for leaseholders. Our expectation is that these requirements will help dutyholders to get things right from the outset, which should reduce additional time at later stages and the need to correct non-compliant or defective work, saving time and money in the longer term.

The Flood Reinsurance (Scheme Funding and Administration) Regulations 2015 define a “flood” as “water, from any source external to a building, which enters a building…at or below ground level, or above ground level, provided that part of the body of such water is at ground level; and does so with a volume, weight or force which is substantial and abnormal". Therefore, under this definition, surface water flooding is included as standard within the Flood Re scheme’s offer.

Insurance companies can choose to cede the flood risk element of an eligible household policy to Flood Re if the Schemes premium for that is lower than they can otherwise offer. Flood Re does not have any involvement in or influence over individual insurers’ decisions to cede policies.

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation determined what buildings on Ministry of Defence land might potentially contain Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) material based on the period in which they were constructed and their construction type.

Surveys are currently being conducted on all buildings which may have been constructed using RAAC.

We take the health and safety of our Service personnel and defence employees extremely seriously and have robust procedures around managing asbestos which comply with Health and Safety regulations.

We are responsible for circa 1,967 sites and each building with confirmed asbestos is listed on the relevant site asbestos register. This data is not held centrally and can only be provided at disproportionate cost.

We have undertaken a substantial programme of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) inspections across the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) estate and, as a result of this work, RAAC was found in one MoJ property in Lancashire. No MoJ properties in Flyde were found to contain RAAC.

The National Health Service has been surveying hospital sites to identify the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) since 2019. The table below shows the number of NHS sites found to have RAAC in the Fylde constituency and Lancashire:

Note: the three sites in Lancashire were the Blackpool Victoria Hospital, now eradicated, the Royal Blackburn Hospital, and the Blackburn Ambulance Station.

The Department has published a full list of sites with confirmed RAAC on GOV.UK website, at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reinforced-autoclaved-aerated-concrete-raac-in-hospitals-management-information

Once the presence of RAAC is confirmed at a hospital site, the trust joins NHS England’s national RAAC programme, which has delivered mitigation and eradication works across all hospital sites with confirmed RAAC to keep facilities safe and open, and which is working to remove RAAC fully from the NHS estate.

The Government is committed to removing RAAC from the NHS estate as a priority and will continue to support NHS England’s RAAC programme with £440 million in 2025/26.

Organisations are able to apply for funding to maintain and develop heritage buildings through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Arms-Length Bodies.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund awards grants ranging from £3,000 to over £5 million for projects that conserve and enhance heritage, making it accessible to everyone. Last year it invested £330 million. Historic England, the government’s statutory advisor on the historic environment, offers grants for the repair and conservation of historic buildings, monuments, and landscapes that are of national importance.

In February of this year, the Secretary of State announced an additional £20 million in funding for the heritage sector, more than doubling the support for Heritage at Risk to £15 million.The Architectural Heritage Fund is delivering the £4.85m Heritage Revival Fund, which supports community organisations to take ownership of, adapt and reuse heritage assets. In addition, DCMS directly funds the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, which provides grants towards VAT paid on repairs and maintenance to the nation's listed places of worship.

The Government provides the majority of funding for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England - which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding in areas of greatest need to tackle inactivity levels through community-led solutions. Additional funding for grassroots sport facilities is also provided through the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme, which is delivering £98 million in funding across the UK in 2025/26.