Advice come as government dashes hopes of new funding to fix or replace closed schools
RIBA has called on the government to set up an industry-led taskforce to coordinate safety measures in schools affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
The institute’s board chair Jack Pringle also urged the Department for Education (DfE) to immediately publish its Condition of Schools Survey to expose the full scale of the problems caused by the deteriorating material which have forced the closure of more than 100 schools just days before the start of the autumn term.
In June, the government told all departments to investigate their estates to identify the presence of RAAC. Pringle said ministers must now urgently carry out this audit of public buildings to identify how widespread the issue is.
He said: “Once immediate safety risks have been resolved, we need to look to the future. We must make sure this doesn’t happen again – learn from mistakes, ensure all products are safe, and have a programme of work to upgrade buildings as they reach the end of their life. The mobilisation of private finance will be key to achieving this.”
Pringle’s comments came as the government dashed hopes of new funding to fix or replace schools told to close immediately due to fears over the structural integrity of the RAAC which they contain.
The DfE issued the order to close last week after the collapse of a beam, previously thought to be safe, made of the concrete.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said yesterday on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the government would “spend what it takes” to ensure children can attend school safely.
Treasury briefings later in the day clarified that, confirming that any such funding would come from the DfE’s existing budget for buildings and that schools, academies and local authorities would not be given extra cash to bus pupils to alternative sites.
This morning, education secretary Gillian Keegan made a series of broadcast appearances explaining that the DfE would cover all of the capital costs relating to the crisis, including temporary classrooms and remediation work, while revenue costs – such as furniture for temporary classrooms – would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
She told Sky News that the DfE had already procured a stock of portable cabins from three suppliers for schools in need of temporary accommodation.
Eight structural surveying firms have been appointed as well as one national propping company.
“Normally we wouldn’t do this, the responsible bodies would do it. But to make it more efficient we’ve centrally taken that on board so that we can pay for it and make sure that it is very quickly available,” she said.
> Also read: The RAAC schools crisis: what we know so far
> Also read: Government spending less than half the money it says is needed to keep schools safe
Regarding the refurbishment and rebuilding work itself, Keegan said the department was “committed” to funding it, but that it needed to “get a case together to figure out how much it is going to cost”.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson blamed the crisis on the 2010 decision to cut Tony Blair’s school building programme and said using already-allocated money to fix the issue would be “storing up problems for the future” by funnelling money away from other necessary work to upgrade schools and remove dangerous asbestos.
The news comes alongside revelations by the DfE’s former permanent secretary that prime minister Rishi Sunak refused to fully fund school repairs during his own time as chancellor.
Jonathan Slater led the department for four years between 2016 and 2020, overseeing a survey of schools which found the backlog of repairs had grown, with between 300 and 400 schools needing to be replaced each year.
They were granted funding to replaced just 100 annually, which was subsequently cut in half as part of the 2021 spending review – despite the department’s request that it be doubled.
“The frustrating thing in this particular case is that we had carried out a survey. We knew what was needed, we knew that a proper rebuilding program was going to be required otherwise these sorts of panics would take place, and now they have,” Slater told the Today programme this morning.
Later this morning, Sunak rejected Slater’s claims, insisting the 50 schools a year he committed to funding in 2021 was in line with what the government had previously done.
He further said that it was “utterly wrong” to blame him for the failure to tackle the RAAC crisis and said the timing was “frustrated”
“New information came to light relatively recently,” he said, emphasising that the government had acted “as swiftly as possible”.
According to education minister Gillian Keegan, 90% of the 15,000 schools built in the period in which RAAC was used had responded to prior government surveys.
Of these respondents, only 1% were found to have RAAC. Fifty two of these were initially identified as “critical” cases and were remediated, while a further 104 were deemed non-critical.
Last month, a ceiling at one of these “non-critical“ schools collapsed unexpectedly, leading to a change in status for all 104.
Keegan told BBC Breakfast that, given the roughly 1,500 schools yet to return their surveys, there could be hundreds more RAAC cases to be identified.
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