Build: Perspective – Education

UK higher education estates are entering 2026 under growing strain, as financial pressures and legacy asset issues converge to reshape how institutions manage and invest in their property portfolios. Rising costs, combined with ageing building stock and long-standing maintenance backlogs, are forcing a significant shift away from large-scale development towards more targeted, pragmatic estate strategies.

For many universities, schools and colleges, the economics of large developments have become increasingly difficult to justify. As a result, schemes that might once have progressed are now being delayed, phased, or cancelled altogether. In their place, institutions are opting for smaller, lower-risk refurbishment programmes that extend the life of existing assets while limiting capital exposure.

Ageing building stock compounds these challenges. A significant proportion of education facilities were constructed several decades ago and are now approaching – or have exceeded – their intended design life. Without meaningful intervention, these assets become progressively more expensive to operate and more vulnerable to disruption. Inefficient heating and ventilation systems, alongside poor building fabric performance, are driving up energy consumption and running costs at a time when institutional budgets are already under pressure.

Data from HESA highlights why this is becoming such a defining issue. Across the period 2015/16 to 2023/24, total non-residential floorspace rose from 21.9 million sq m to 23.6 million sq m, a rise of 7.5%, while residential floorspace increased from 6.64 million sq m to 6.78 million sq m, a rise of 2.2%. In other words, the higher education sector has steadily been adding space, particularly non-residential, which creates more roofs, plant, services and fabric to maintain, insure and renew.

For estates managers in higher education, this becomes a vicious circle as recent condition assessments of education estates have identified widespread issues in buildings that have not been regularly maintained. Common problems include deteriorating roofs, outdated mechanical and electrical systems, poor insulation, and failing internal finishes. In turn, poorly maintained buildings are often less energy efficient and more expensive to operate. Inefficient heating systems, outdated ventilation, and poor building fabric performance can increase operational costs, placing additional pressure on already constrained budgets.

The overall education estate is large, ageing, and still broadly expanding, which means that estate managers need to be considering strategies around planned maintenance, major M&E replacement, fabric upgrades, and whole building retrofit strategies that protect operational continuity while reducing long-run running costs.

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