School closures due to crumbling concrete

[HoliHormonalTigerLillyTheSecond]

JFC you are kidding me?!

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/31/english-schools-told-to-close-buildings-made-with-crumble-risk-concrete]

Sorry, NobleGiraffe, I have the utmost respect for you and I totally trust your commitment to achieving the best possible education outcomes but private finance schemes would not have done anything long term to improve education. It was always about kicking the can as far down the road as possible. And after 13 Tory and coalition years, they deserve the kicking I agree, but I am yet to be persuaded that any other government would have done much better.

I have a theory that the Education Secretary perhaps thought the reshuffle would mean another job or none in the cabinet, and so sat on it. Once the limited nature of the reshuffle became clear, it could not be sat on any longer.

Much as Michael Gove is a rude man, he is the only competent cabinet minister left now that Ben Wallace has left.

Of course I don't blame Gordon Brown. He was a very decent principled man. Not his fault the world financial crisis hit his administration, and he handled it well at the time. But he handed over a raging shitstorm that is still playing out. And PFI financing is a bag of worms; we've not seen anything yet.

Of course it’s down to the building’s owner to inspect and fix, not the Government.
That'll be a local authority, housing association or private landlord.

I think this will be a massive problem. Every thing has a life span. Many buildings were made of this material , post war from the 1950s because it was cheap and quick.

It’s now 60/70 years old hence the buildings life is coming to an end. Although RAAC was was still used as recent as the 1990s.

Hear me out but those confirmed schools are probably the safest right now. They’ll put mitigations in place whilst kids aren’t in the building. It’s other kids who’s schools have no fricking idea whether they have RAAC or not that are ticking timebombs. Lots of ticking timebombs.

I think I'll just assume all of the schools are unsafe

Safest in terms of RAAC....nothing to say about fire safety, asbestos, sewage leakage, other disrepair.

Re hospitals ours was built in the 80's 30 years later they announced that it was full of asbestos, that took years to remove in stages. If we've got RAAC too god help us.

Our Welsh primary the core of it is old and stone built but no idea about the extension that was built.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-66120844.amp
this implies that at least some countries have been looking into it for a while. Hopefully it’s not quite a cock up on the scale reporting today implies.

Is that the right story? That's a school closing July just gone!

Beginning in 2010,

The Tories reduced capital spending on maintaining the UKs infrastructure, in order to divert more money to the NHS and the State Pension (16% of GDP now (up from 12%))

Instead of investing say 10% (example), they invested 8%.

That loss of 2% has been compounding for 13 years now. Thats a cumulative 23% less in capital investment over that time period.

So the result is that a known (and fixable) problem from the 90s (was ignored for political reasons) has now become a giant national problem that will take years to fix, screw up the education of millions of chidlren, and cost 10x as much to repair due to inflation/borrowing costs.

At this point, the only thing we can do is get these people out of office as fast as humanly possible. Their decisions over the past 13 years have crippled public services in the UK.

I am having a hard time taking this at face value.

Any halfway competent person could have done a better job than they did.

Capital investment to maintain and upgrade the existing stock (buildings, roads, bridges etc) is about as basic as it gets in any developed country.

When you fail to do even that...then you are simply not competent at governing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/01/the-guardian-view-on-dangerous-school-buildings-the-price-of-13-years-of-underinvestment?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

"It’s worth pausing on these two dryly written sentences: “Since summer 2021, DfE has assessed the threat to safety in school buildings as a critical risk. It does not consider its existing mitigations as sufficient to bring the likelihood of this risk materialising down to acceptable levels.”
This is an extraordinary situation to be in.

The DfE are well aware that there has been a dramatic underinvestment in buildings. At the last Spending Review, it asked for £7 billion a year to try to recover the situation. They got £3 billion.
Repeatedly, the Treasury has refused to take this issue seriously enough letting school infrastructure deteriorate to secure short-term savings at high long-term costs; the longer these buildings are left, the harder they will be to repair.
It’s exactly the same situation in the NHS and other parts of the public sector.

One of the core problems of the British state is serial underinvestment in infrastructure."

Sam Freedman article, June 2023 https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/labour-private-school-tax-fix-crumbling-school-buildings

Would other governments have ignored the public sector so thoroughly? It's hard to imagine. We know that the Tory Treasury has a massive problem with short term thinking.

The safety of public buildings has been an issue downplayed for years. In 2014 in Edinburgh a child died when a school wall collapsed on her (Keane Wallace-Bennet). This lead to 17 Edinburgh schools being temporarily closed and concerns raised about several other public buildings including nursing homes. Another national scandal.

Anyone wanting major investment in public infrastructure after the next general election should start lobbying Labour now.

This article in the Guardian this June is enlightening. Take these two.paragraphs:

"Labour sources say that [Rachel] Reeves has indicated to colleagues there will be no additional money to pay for major infrastructure spending, leaving shadow ministers battling to claim a share of the green fund for their own projects.

Labour is nervous about any suggestion of making uncosted spending pledges, with Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, warning that any new Labour commitments are likely to require tax rises."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/01/starmer-urged-to-use-some-of-labours-28bn-green-fund-for-other-spending

Labour is nervous about any suggestion of making uncosted spending pledges, with Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, warning that any new Labour commitments are likely to require tax rises

Wouldn't the case be the same for the Conservatives if they want to tackle any of these issues ? They would have to increase taxes too ?

Incorrect

Either that or borrow yet more. Or spend as little as possible just firefighting problems as they become impossible to ignore.

Labour may make the case for tax rises or more borrowing to tackle crumbling public infrastructure before the election, pointing to things like RAAC.

Or they may raise taxes or borrow more after the election and hope they don't get punished for it after five years.

Or they may ditch the green strategy and spend the money on at least some infrastructure, taking the risk of infuriating green-minded supporters.

Or they may just rely on their published plan to rev up the economy and give them enough money from existing taxes for infrastructure investment. The economic plan looks a bit thin to me, though.
https://labour.org.uk/press/labours-plan-for-a-stronger-more-secure-economy/

@WhiteFire makes a good point- the secondary I went to was Victorian and my primary opened in 1905, so both will be "safe"... except both have expanded because of a rising population over the past 120-150years, much of that post-war, so they're both very likely to have RAAC in the expansions.

Our kids school is 1950s, so waiting to hear it's on the list. Worse still is the AP I work in; an original 1960s building (it used to be a primary school) but because it's an alternative provision the government haven't and won't inspect it for RAAC. So our headteacher is now frantically trying to make the calls and pay for someone to come out quickly and look at it.

This is absolutely crazy. Between this and the cladding disaster the scale of remedial work needed is huge. And it won't just be these schools already identified.

Is there any indication they will go after the main contractors that still exist?

Our biggest local secondary was demolished and rebuilt about 5 years ago, and the biggest primary school is being rebuilt right now, makes me wonder if this was a factor because we are not in an area that generally gets a lot of funding for big projects.

This must have been known about for a very long time. I went to a primary and secondary school of the flat roof, 1960s, concrete variety in the 90s. The secondary school was completely demolished and rebuilt a number of years ago. The primary school still stands. I worked in a building used by the public which demolished its upper level carpark a few years ago because bits of concrete were falling off onto the cars below and people were making claims - I presume it was similar material but certainly not old like 1960s. I believe the numbers are much much higher - in all sorts of buildings, not just schools.

I haven’t RTFT, so apologies if a list has already been shared.

Full list of schools affected so far (Source: LBC via the globalplayer app. Posted today at 14:16)

• Abbey Lane Primary School, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
• Arthur Bugler Primary School, Standford-le-Hope,Thurrock
• The Appleton School, Essex
• The Billericay School, Billericay, Essex
• Buckhurst Hill Community Primary School, Essex
• Canon Slade School, Bolton, Greater Manchester
• Carmel College and Sixth Form, Darlington, County Durham
• Clacton County High School, Clacton, Essex
• Claydon High School, Ipswich, Suffolk
• Cleeve Park School, Sidcup
• Cockermouth School, Cockermouth, Cumbria
• The Coopers' Company and Coburn School, Essex
• Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School, Brixton, London
• Cranbourne College, Basingstoke, Hampshire
• Crossflatts Primary School, Bradford, West Yorkshire
• Donnington Wood Infants School, Donnington, Telford, Shropshire
• East Bergholt High School, Colchester, Essex
• Eldwick Primary School, Bradford, West Yorkshire
• The Ellen Wilkinson School, London
• Farlingaye High School, Woodbridge, Suffolk
• Fulwood Secondary, Preston, Lancashire
• Ferryhill School, a secondary in County Durham
• The Gilberd School, Colchester, Essex
• Greenway Junior School, Horsham
• Hadleigh High School, Hadleigh, Suffolk
• Hatfield Peverel Junior School, Chelmsford, Essex
• Hockley Primary School, Hockley, Essex
• Holy Trinity Catholic Academy, Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire
• Honywood School, Colchester, Essex
• Jerounds Primary School in Harlow, Essex
• Katherines Primary Academy, Harlow, Essex
• Kingsdown School, Southend-on-Sea, Essex
• Mayflower Primary School, Leicester, Leicestershire
• Myton School, Warwick, Warwickshire
• Northampton International Academy
• Our Lady's Catholic High School, Preston, Lancashire
• Outwoods Primary School, Atherstone, North Warwickshire
• Parks Primary, Leicester, Leicestershire
• Pershore High School, Worcestershire
• Ramsey Academy, Halstead, Essex
• Ravens Academy, Clacton-On-Sea, Essex
• Scalby School, Scarborough
• St Bartholomew's Catholic Primary School, Kent
• St Bede's Catholic School and Byron Sixth Form College, County Durham
• St Clere's School, Stanford-le-Hope, Essex
• St Gregory's Catholic Science College, Harrow, London
• St James Catholic Primary School, Hebburn, Tyne and Wear
• St Leonard's School, Durham, County Durham
• St Teresa's Catholic Primary School, Darlington, County Durham
• St Thomas More Catholic Comprehensive, Eltham, London
• Tendring Technology College, Frinton Campus, Essex
• Thomas Lord Audley School, Colchester, Essex
• Thurstable school and sixth form, Essex
• White Hall Academy primary, Clacton, Essex
• Willowbrook Mead Primary Academy, Leicester, Leicestershire
• Winter Gardens Academy, Canvey Island, Essex
• Wood Green Academy, Wednesbury, West Midlands
• Woodville Primary School, South Woodham Ferrers, Chelmsford, Essex
• Wyburns Primary School, Rayleigh, Essex