Begin with the operating model

Ask finance and estates to prepare the brief together. A day or prep school may have a compact teaching estate and shared sports facilities. A mixed or boarding school may also operate houses, kitchens, laundry and residences. A specialist setting may have particular environmental and care requirements. A group needs a clear view of each school as well as the combined requirement.

Record which activities actually take place, who operates them and who pays for their energy. Avoid building the forecast around the label “independent school”. The useful description is a calendar of occupied spaces, operating hours and planned changes, linked to the supply points through which energy reaches them.

Make one controlled supply-point register

For each electricity and gas supply, record the meter identifier, site, physical location, account name, legal customer, supplier and contract dates. Add the person who can obtain bills and interval data. Check whether several buildings share a meter or whether one building has several supplies. Photograph or verify labels where identification is uncertain.

Include staff accommodation, rented spaces and commercial activities in the investigation. Establish whether the school buys the supply, pays a recharge or supplies someone else through its own meter. Mark the boundary and the responsible entity. A convenient internal allocation does not, on its own, determine tax treatment or contractual responsibility.

Record LPG, oil and other fuels separately where present. They affect the estate’s energy requirement, but their purchasing, storage and safety arrangements differ from a mains gas or electricity agreement. This programme’s comparison tools need the stated electricity or gas inputs; an LPG delivery price should not be entered as if it were a mains gas tariff.

Show the calendar behind consumption

Use at least a complete, representative year where suitable data are available. Keep actual readings, estimated readings, missing periods and corrections distinguishable. Interval electricity data can reveal demand outside teaching hours; gas use needs consideration of weather and heating operation. Annual totals alone can hide differences between teaching, boarding and holiday activity.

Create a calendar that identifies term dates, preparation days, evening activities, weekly and flexi boarding, holiday lettings, pool operation and essential year-round services. Discuss it with the staff who run those activities. A school may be academically closed while parts of the estate remain occupied or require controlled operation.

A fall in pupil numbers does not translate automatically into the same percentage fall in kWh. A building may still need heating, a pool may remain open and fixed charges may continue. Record the assumptions connecting changed activity with energy demand and ask a competent person to test material estimates.

Make the future requirement explicit

List expected changes during every term under consideration: a building opening or closing, a boarding-house refurbishment, changed letting hours, an acquisition or a heating project. Separate approved and funded changes from proposals. Provide a central forecast and a reasonable alternative where timing or effect is uncertain.

Where planned on-site generation or electrification will change imported energy, include the forecast effect and its assumptions in the buying brief. The investment appraisal belongs in the relevant separate programme. The energy buyer needs to understand the effect on demand, capacity and contract flexibility before accepting supply terms.

For a measure in the school’s climate or estate plan, keep the plan reference, project owner, approval and funding status, affected supplies and expected start date beside the demand assumption. Ask the competent project adviser to explain the expected change in imports by relevant period. A heat conversion can reduce one fuel while increasing another; on-site generation needs a forecast of electricity used on site, rather than total generation deducted from imports.

Give the bursar a case in which the project starts as planned and a case in which it is delayed or does not proceed. Explain which case supports the common buying requirement and why. Include any transition period when existing and replacement systems operate together. The project approval and the supply agreement each need their own authorised decision; a climate-plan entry does not commit the school to either.

DfE’s climate-action-plan guidance, updated on 3 November 2026, is non-statutory and applies to England. It supports a whole-setting plan, rather than prescribing an energy-buying product. An independent school should connect that work to its own proprietor, charity or company governance and use the relevant national guidance for other UK schools. Its EAUC methodology signpost concerns further and higher education; it does not establish a universal independent-school reporting requirement.

Release the same version to every provider

Assign an owner, version and issue date. Obtain finance and estates sign-off, then give all competing providers the same requirement and response schedule. Log questions and share material corrections consistently. Record assumptions that a provider has replaced or excluded so the eventual comparison can reconcile them.

Your completed brief should leave the school able to identify the legal buyer, reconcile the meters to the bills, explain the operating calendar and name the uncertain changes. Keep unresolved data gaps visible with owners and dates. The next action is to use this brief to specify the buying and continuing service the school needs.