The Wonder Learning Partnership’s Estates and Compliance team work closely with our family of schools to support the extensive range of compliance matters across the full school estate. We have developed a suite of templates including risk assessments and procedures to support the Trust wide policies in place. Our local arrangements documents provide clear information to individual schools, and guide colleagues through actions they need to take to achieve and maintain compliance.

Through a programme of planned audits, the Estates and Compliance team monitor the condition of Trust buildings and land, as well as ensuring that the required inspections, service, maintenance, and checks are suitably completed. Where deficiencies or improvements are identified, a detailed action plan is agreed with the school, this is rated and prioritised according to risk. Real-time Compliance Information We have recently introduced a Trust wide electronic system to log and manage all planned and reactive maintenance. The system will identify any upcoming dates to the school and allow for a real time snapshot of compliance levels to be viewed by the school and centrally.

Routine arrangements are overseen by the school, with works usually undertaken by external contractors. However, it also recognised that there are a wealth of in-house checks that are just as important as the cyclical schedule, and these are usually required to be completed more frequently on a termly, monthly, or even weekly basis.

Easing the Pressure

We understand that school sites have limited site team resources. Caretaking colleagues often work a constrained number of hours, and frequently, re-active tasks must take priority over routine checks. This can lead to checks being missed and leave the school vulnerable to falling short of the required standards. To combat this, we have a dedicated compliance assistant, who works tirelessly across our family of schools to support individual site team colleagues and to provide reassurance to our Headteachers that their school is discharging its legal duties.

The activities completed by the compliance assistant will vary according to the current available resources and needs of the individual school. At a large secondary school, our compliance assistant will act as the second person with the on-duty caretaker to assist in the weekly fire call point check. Although a short and simple activity, it is a two-person job and so this is a vital task to ensure that the school complies with the requirements of the current fire risk assessment and fire safety arrangements. Across our family of primary schools, the compliance assistant will undertake a planned visit once per month to complete checks such as the visual condition of the fabric of the building, taking sentinel water temperatures, and testing the emergency lighting. This ensures that regardless of any reactive matters arising for the school site team to address, the school can still meet its duty in respect of asbestos, legionella, and fire management.

Ongoing at all schools, our compliance assistant will carry out unannounced termly visual inspections. This involves a tour of the school estate, working to a pre-agreed check list and completing a visual check of both internal and external areas. Wherever possible, our compliance assistant will correct any deficiencies identified at the time of the inspection. Where this is not possible, where long-term actions are identified or where matters of concern arise, findings will be communicated to the school and a way forward agreed. The Estates and Compliance team are always looking to identify good practice when undertaking visits, inspections, and audits. We ensure that the templates we work from are clear and enable ease of tracking progress, to evidence and celebrate the positive compliance journey of each individual school.