DfE Condition Survey Pilot - A waste of time?

New Survey, Same Old CDC? Our Take on the DfE Condition Survey Pilot

We wanted to love this pilot.

We really did.

When the Department for Education invited us to take part in Phase 3 of its School Estate Data Collection Pilot, we were genuinely pleased to get involved.

And yes, we appreciate that being genuinely excited about a condition survey data pilot probably tells you rather more about us than we intended.

But there was good reason for it.

For years, the education estates sector has needed a more consistent approach to condition data: an agreed format that Responsible Bodies can use to understand and manage their own estates, that surveyors can work to consistently, and finally ditch the problematic CDC programme.

That is also broadly where the DfE says it wants to go.

Its Education Estates Strategy: A Decade of National Renewal sets out a move towards Responsible Bodies collecting their own condition data using common standards, with national rollout planned from autumn 2027 and two-way data sharing by 2028 through Manage Your Education Estate.

We support the principle behind that direction.

Which is precisely why Phase 3 left us so disappointed.

A brand-new condition survey. Sort of.

On paper, the Phase 3 pilot sounds like a significant step.

The DfE describes its purpose as understanding how Responsible Bodies can provide estate data against a defined specification, creating a consistent dataset across the school estate and over time. Importantly, participants were told to commission a new condition survey, rather than simply hand over condition information they already held.

We went into the exercise expecting, reasonably enough, to see meaningful progress towards the condition survey format of the future. In line with the snippets of guidance that had been released in the run-up.

What we encountered felt very different.

The CS Data Capture Form was, essentially a dressed-up CDC data capture form.

And the supposedly new survey specification? Again, what we received was remarkably familiar.

At one point, “Condition Data Collection” had quite literally been lined through and replaced with “Condition Survey”.

We appreciate the attractions of recycling. We're just not sure this is what the circular economy had in mind.

That might sound like a trivial bit of document editing, but for us it captured the fundamental problem with the pilot perfectly.

The name had moved on. The format hadn't.

And that's the missed opportunity

This matters because there is an enormous opportunity sitting in front of the DfE.

The Department's strategy isn't simply proposing another national data collection exercise. It talks about common data structures and standards, Responsible Bodies maintaining their own useful estate information, better digital tools and ultimately two-way sharing of that information with the Department.

That could represent a very significant improvement on what has gone before.

And there is progress elsewhere. In August 2026, the DfE published its Education Estates Property Data Model, establishing a common structure for organising estate information around sites, blocks or facilities, floors or rooms, and assets or elements.

But crucially, the Department also released its Condition surveys for school and college buildings: guidance for responsible bodies in Feburary 2026, a huge step forward to an agreed format?

So perhaps there is an awkward question that needs asking.

Was Phase 3 simply too early?

Would it have been better to make meaningful progress on the new Condition Survey format first, agree what good looks like and then ask Responsible Bodies to pilot it?

We think that's a fair question.

Was it a waste of time?

Tempting question, isn't it?

Particularly when you've commissioned a supposedly new Condition Survey only to discover something that looks suspiciously like CDC wearing a false moustache.

But our answer is more nuanced than that.

If the purpose was to pilot the future Condition Survey format, we struggle to see how Phase 3 could fully achieve that when the future format hadn't meaningfully emerged yet.

And we suspect that may have affected participation, its known that many trusts declined to take part.

Taking part isn't entirely insignificant. Responsible Bodies have to appoint an appropriately qualified Technical Adviser, procure the work, arrange the visit, complete the prescribed return and upload the required information. The DfE does reimburse the survey cost, but somebody still has to do all of the organising around it.

For a busy trust estates team, the obvious question is:

What are we getting out of this?

Had Phase 3 been testing a clearly developed version of the condition survey that Responsible Bodies may ultimately be expected to commission from 2027 onwards, we think the proposition would have been considerably stronger.

Instead, the survey element risks feeling like an expensive rehearsal using yesterday's script.

But that doesn't mean nothing has moved forward

This is where we don't want the criticism to obscure something important.

The pilot isn't only about the survey form.

The DfE says Phase 3 is intended to understand how estate information can be supplied by Responsible Bodies consistently and, importantly, wants feedback about the practical challenges and barriers encountered along the way. That feedback is intended to inform future data collection.

And there is value in testing that process.

What does commissioning look like?

Where does the administrative burden sit?

How readily can survey information be transferred?

What works for Responsible Bodies?

What doesn't?

What information does the Department actually need?

And, eventually, how do we create a system in which the same high-quality estate information is useful to both parties?

So perhaps the fairest conclusion is this:

The condition survey format hasn't moved forward. But the conversation around how condition data will be collected, structured and shared has.

And that is still progress.

Why our experience reinforces our view of CDC

Participating in the Phase 3 pilot has also reinforced something we've believed for a long time.

CDC served a purpose as a national data collection programme. It gave the Department a consistent (not always accurate) national view and the DfE's current strategy explicitly says that future common standards will build on the data established through CDC.

But in our experience, CDC has never been fit for purpose as a Responsible Body's estate management condition survey.

Those are two different things.

An estates team doesn't commission a condition survey merely so that somebody can populate a national spreadsheet.

It needs information that allows it to understand liabilities, identify risk, prioritise interventions, develop costed programmes, plan capital investment and manage buildings intelligently over time.

The DfE's own current condition-survey guidance recognises that condition surveys should help Responsible Bodies understand deterioration, plan maintenance and make more accurate investment decisions. Interestingly, that guidance is itself described as interim, pending the Department's new technical standards.

That is why the eventual Condition Survey standard matters so much.

We shouldn't simply turn CDC into CS by changing two letters.

We have an opportunity to build something better.

The destination is still the right one

And this is perhaps the slightly odd conclusion to an article in which we've just spent several paragraphs complaining about a spreadsheet.

We're glad we took part.

Because we still believe strongly in what the DfE is ultimately trying to achieve with estate data.

The Education Estates Strategy envisages Responsible Bodies collecting and maintaining their own data against common standards, using it to manage their estates properly and sharing it with the Department. By 2028, the intention is for that sharing to become two-way, giving Responsible Bodies and DfE a shared understanding of the estate.

Done properly, that's a big change.

Commission once. Collect properly. Use it locally. Share what is needed nationally. Get useful intelligence back.

That, to us, is what good looks like.

So, should the pilot have waited?

Perhaps.

If delaying Phase 3 would have allowed the Department to put a genuinely developed Condition Survey format in front of the sector, there is a strong argument that the resulting pilot would have been more useful — and potentially more attractive to Responsible Bodies.

Because asking the sector to test a new approach before the important bit is actually new is always going to be a difficult sell.

But we're also conscious that you don't design something this complicated perfectly behind closed doors and unveil it with a ribbon around it.

Testing the process, exposing the frustrations and hearing Responsible Bodies say, “This still looks like CDC” may itself be part of getting to a better answer.

In fact, DfE explicitly says the emerging property model and data schema will continue to be tested and refined with input from Responsible Bodies and sector organisations.

So no, for us, it wasn't a waste of time.

It was a missed opportunity to test something more ambitious.

But it was also another step towards something the education estates sector genuinely needs: an agreed Condition Survey format, common estate data standards and meaningful two-way sharing of information between Responsible Bodies and the Department.

We're just hoping that, by the next pilot, Condition Survey means rather more than just striking through Condition Data Collection.