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Like many of you, I spent time at last week’s excellent ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Schools Exhibition and Conference at London’s ExCeL. As ever, it was a great chance to meet people from all sectors and all parts of the country who are engaged in the delivery of the full range of schools capital programmes, and to reflect on progress and share lessons learned as we look ahead to forthcoming challenges and opportunities.

As many speakers noted at BSEC 2010, PfS has enjoyed a highly productive year - and one which saw many changes for our organisation. This month we hit our 50th financial close in the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Schools for the Future (BSF) programme and over 130,000 pupils and 12,000 teachers are now benefitting from BSF investment. But of course our involvement in a wide range of capital projects is now quite different from the picture just 12 months ago.

We are now also seeing the first projects completed as part of the £200 million Co-location Fund - part of our increased remit and a great example of our ’One Conversation’ integrated approach. By co-locating health facilities with housing support, sports with childcare, and youth centres with libraries and the arts, the Co-location Fund has offered 101 projects up and down the country the opportunity to develop community-focused facilities - some of which are being delivered alongside BSF.

One of the first projects to be completed is the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre in Waterloo, London, which has seen existing and unused basement space converted into a suite of consultin