Cyclical maintenance
Cyclical maintenance is significant maintenance work that needs to be undertaken on school property.
School boards must set aside enough funds to perform their cyclical maintenance over a 10-year period.
What is cyclical maintenance?
School boards and proprietors are responsible for overseeing the maintenance of school property.
One of the most common examples of cyclical maintenance is painting the exterior of school buildings.
Painting is done cyclically, usually every seven to 10 years, and is a significant cost.
If a board does not set aside enough money each year to cover this, it may struggle to pay for the cost of painting in the year it needs to be completed.
Other examples of cyclical maintenance include resurfacing sports areas, painting swimming pools, and resealing car parks.
How is cyclical maintenance funded?
Every three months, your school receives funding for property maintenance as part of its operations grant.
Your board should set aside a portion of this grant to build up funds for cyclical maintenance. This is known as provisioning.
Provisioning is shown as a liability (money owing) in your statement of financial position (balance sheet).
You should set aside enough funds to match that liability, which in turn supports good planning.
How do you calculate your cyclical maintenance provision?
Your 10-Year Property Plan (10YPP) will help determine the major items of cyclical maintenance that need provision.
The Ministry's cyclical maintenance provision calculator estimates how much funding should be set aside each year.
The assumptions made in the calculator should be verified by your board annually and by a suitably qualified person every five years.
Compare your figures to the professionally reviewed 10YPP or a long-term painting contract.
Review your assumptions more frequently if:
- A 5-Year Plan (5YP) has been agreed to in the current year, and the 5YP programme covers some maintenance requirements.
- The expenditure in the current year is not in accordance with the current provision in the previous year.
- If there are any grounds to doubt the reasonableness of the provision.
It is important that the provision is correct and not influenced by any funding flows.
Should your cyclical maintenance funds be in a separate bank account?
There is no requirement to have a separate bank account for cyclical maintenance.
But it is good practice to set these funds aside in a bank account (or investment) and clearly identify where they are on your statement of financial position.
Questions your board could ask
- Are we up-to-date with our cyclical maintenance?
- How much have we set aside for cyclical maintenance this year and beyond?
- Does our reserve match our cyclical maintenance calculator plan?
- Have we reviewed our plan this year and recorded any changes?
- When did a suitably qualified person last review our plan?
Templates, resources, and references
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