On-site accommodation for Teachers

Rules may be relaxed permitting schools to build on-site accommodation for teachers

There are indications that certain planning regulations, currently prohibiting building on regulated lands, are about to be changed. The impetus behind this alteration is to permit some schools to build on-site accommodation for teachers. Many schools throughout the United Kingdom are in possession of large amounts of land - often hundreds of acres - which they are currently disbarred from developing, a legal prevention order similar to that protecting green belt land.

The news featured in the Department for Education`s flagship Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy, published last week, which noted the difficulty many teachers had in securing affordable accommodation, especially in major cities:

`We know that housing is an issue for teachers in areas of short supply,` and `We will explore whether there is demand from teachers for new homes on surplus school land.

`If there is clear and sufficient demand, we will work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to explore whether an extension of permitted development rights is needed to speed up such developments.`

The chief executive of the Harris Federation of Academies Sir Dan Moynihan, has stated that `if someone doesn`t do something, there will be no public sector workers left in London.`

A federation commissioned by Sir Moynihan Back in 2017 had apparently located `six or seven` sites, where there was sufficient land, `surplus to the play[ground] requirements` where accommodation could be built. Obviously this kind of construction work needs to be regulated - we want to avoid a situation where, ten or fifteen years in the future there is ample accommodation for teachers on-site, but significantly less play areas for children.

The LocatED company is a government-owned property company, set up to creating `much-needed school places for thousands of children.` Its chief executive, Lara Newman, has said the organisation is working hard to see how it can develop accommodation on school sites `including teacher housing where there`s a problem`.

Everyone knows there is a serious problem with teacher retention, throughout the UK, but in major cities especially. In London the problem has reached critical levels, with government figures published last year revealing that four out of 10 quit the profession within five years of qualifying. That is a sad statistic indeed: 40% of newly qualified teachers will have left the profession before they have spent five years in it. A report published in September of 2018, entitled `Analysis of teacher supply, retention and mobility,` disclosed that out of the 35,000 newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who began teaching in London during 2010, more than 11,000 have already left.

There are many reasons why retention in the teaching profession is so low: high workload and stress are certainly part of the problem - but low wages obviously play a significant role. A significant number of teachers in the capital are struggling to pay rent, and there are reports that many teachers are on the edge of homelessness. Labor MP Matthew Pennycock, who analysed the September 2018 government report, said that the problem of poor teacher retention certainly included:

`Workload, stagnant pay, rising living costs and a lack of genuinely affordable housing to rent and buy [these are certainly things] that lie behind this worrying trend.`

The Commons Public Accounts Committee cited high housing costs in many cities as a significant factor in the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Mp`s asked the Department for Education `if it had considered using land that it pays for to help provide affordable housing for teachers`.

In response to this question, a report on teaching supply revelled that the DfE had engaged in
`discussions with individual multi-academy trusts and local authorities about such initiatives and was willing to talk to any schools with proposals to support teachers with housing`.

If more schools are given permission to build accommodation on their land, this would alleviate at least some of the problems for teachers. What we don`t want of course is schools seeing the relaxation of building regulations as an avaricious opportunity to develop private housing for the general public.