School buildings in England made with certain type of concrete forced to close over safety fears
School buildings in England made with a certain type of concrete prone to collapse will be immediately closed over safety fears, the government has announced.
Around 104 schools or “settings” will be disrupted on top of 50 that have already been affected this year.
The Department for Education (DfE) said the vast majority of schools and colleges “will be unaffected” – but Labour criticised the move as a “staggering display of Tory incompetence”.
Read more:
How will I know if my child’s school is being closed?
The type of concrete forcing the closures is Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, known as RAAC.
It is the same type of concrete that has been found in some hospitals that have been deemed to be unsafe, prompting Health Secretary Steve Barclay to fast-track them into the government’s hospitals-building programme.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told reporters that 156 schools had been identified as containing RAAC.
Of those, 104 have been assigned a caseworker and surveyors will be sent to inspect them.
“We’re taking a very safety-first approach and we’re really being cautious here,” she said.
“The first thing we’ll do is we’ll identify where the RAAC is, so some children will be moved to a different part of the building, some of the buildings will be propped up, so the roofs will be propped up, some of them will be having temporary classrooms,” she said.
Ms Keegan urged schools to get in touch with DfE if they were concerned, but added: “If you don’t hear then don’t worry about it – this is something that is isolated to those 156 schools.”
She said “at some point” the department would produce a list of all the schools that had been affected.
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England’s crumbling schools
Secretary of state must ‘get a grip on her department’
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the government was “failing” children by needing to close schools just before the new term started.
“This is an absolutely staggering display of Tory incompetence as they start a fresh term by failing our children again,” she said.
“Dozens of England’s schools are at risk of collapse with just days before children crowd their corridors. Ministers have been content to let this chaos continue for far too long.
“It’s long past time the secretary of state got a grip on her department.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, also said the “news is shocking, sadly it is not hugely surprising”.
“What we are seeing here are the very real consequences of a decade of swingeing cuts to spending on school buildings,” he said.
“The government is right to put the safety of pupils and staff first – if the safety of buildings cannot be guaranteed, there is no choice but to close them so urgent building work can take place.
“But there is no escaping the fact that the timing of this couldn’t be worse, with children due to return from the summer holidays next week.”
Kevin Bentley, senior vice-chairman of the Local Government Association, said the timing of the announcement meant schools and council had been left with “very little time to make urgent rearrangements and minimise disruption to classroom learning”.
He called on the government to urgently set up a task force to tackle the issue and to provide councils with further funding and technical expertise to repair or replace buildings with RAAC.
The DfE said the majority of the school sites would remain open for face-to-face learning and only specific parts of buildings closed where RAAC is used.
It said a minority will need to either “fully or partially relocate to alternative accommodation” while mitigations are put in place.
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Some hospitals deemed ‘unsafe’ because of RAAC
The department said the government has been aware of RAAC in public sector buildings since 1994 but the issue came to light in 2018, when a roof collapsed at a Kent school.
That year the DfE published guidance for schools stating the need to have “adequate contingencies” in the event of evacuations caused by concerns over the use of RAAC.
In June this year, the National Audit Office (NAO) said a school collapse in England that causes death or injury was “very likely” – but that the government did not have sufficient information to manage “critical” risks to the safety of pupils and staff.
Around 24,000 school buildings – more than a third of the total number in England – are beyond their estimated design lifespan – with school leaders branding the scale of building safety issues “shocking”.
Questions were also raised about the state of UK hospitals after Mr Barclay said that five new sites would be added to the government’s programme to build 40 new hospitals because the presence of RAAC made them unsafe to operate “beyond 2030”.
Five new sites – Airedale General in Keighley, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Hinchingbrooke near Huntingdon, Leighton Hospital in Cheshire and Frimley Park in Surrey – were added to the programme as a priority.
Is your school being closed down or has it already been closed due to RAAC? Are you concerned about the problem at your school? Contact us at Sky.today@sky.uk
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It started with a strong espresso in a simple cafe on a side street in north London.
Several Algerian men were inside, a few others were outside on the pavement, smoking.
I’d been told the wanted prisoner might be in Finsbury Park, so I ordered a coffee and asked if they’d seen him.
Spotting a man resembling the suspect, Tom and camera operator Josh Masters gave chase
They were happy to tell me that some of them knew Brahim Kaddour-Cherif – the 24-year-old offender who was on the run.
One of the customers revealed to me that he’d actually seen him the night before.
“He wants to hand himself to police,” the friend said candidly.
This was the beginning of the end of a high-profile manhunt.
The Algerian convicted sex offender had been at large since 29 October, after he was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London.
Within an hour of meeting the friend in the cafe, he had followed myself and camera operator Josh Masters to a nearby street.
Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu (pictured). They were both arrested separately in Finsbury Park. Pic: Crown Prosecution Service/PA
We weren’t yet filming – he didn’t want any attention or fuss surrounding him.
“Follow me, he’s in the park,” the man told me.
“Follow – but not too close.”
We did.
I was in the same park a few weeks ago after fugitive Hadush Kebatu, the Ethiopian sex offender – also wrongly released from prison – was arrested in Finsbury Park.
It was odd to be back in the same spot in such similar circumstances.
Read more on Tom’s story:
Wrongly released prisoner’s angry reaction
‘I’m glad he’s been arrested‘
As he led us through the park past joggers, young families and people playing tennis, the man headed for the gates near Finsbury Park station.
All of a sudden, two police officers ran past us.
The Met had received a tip-off from a member of the public.
It was frantic. Undercover officers, uniformed cops, screeching tyres and blaring sirens. We were in the middle of the manhunt.
As they scoured the streets at speed, we walked by some of the Algerian men I’d seen in the cafe.
Kaddour-Cherif walked up to a nearby police van as Tom continued to question him
One man near the group was wearing green tracksuit bottoms, a beanie hat and had glasses on.
“It’s him, it’s him,” one of the other men said to me, gesturing towards him.
The man in the beanie then quickly turned on his heel and walked off.
“It’s him, it’s him,” another guy agreed.
The suspect was walking off while the police were still searching the nearby streets.
Josh and I caught up with him and I asked directly: “Are you Brahim?”
You may have watched the exchange in the Sky News video – he was in denial, evasive and pretended the suspect had pedalled off on a Lime bike.
I can only guess he knew the game was up, but for whatever reason, he was keeping up the lie.
Police moved in to handcuff him and used their phones to check an image of the wanted man from one of Sky News’ online platforms
Once his identity was confirmed, Kaddour-Cherif was put into the back of the police van
Moments later, one of the bystanders told me “it is him” – with added urgency.
Only the prisoner knows why he then walked up to the nearby police van – officers quickly moved to handcuff him and tell him why he was being arrested.
Over the next 10 minutes, he became agitated. His story changed as I repeatedly asked if he had been the man inside HMP Wandsworth.
Officers needed confirmation too – one quickly pulled out a smartphone and checked an image of the wanted man from one of Sky News’ online platforms.
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When Tom first caught up with him, Kaddour-Cherif claimed the culprit had left on a Lime bike
“It’s not my f****** fault, they release me!” he yelled at me.
The search was over, the prisoner cage in the back of the van was opened and he was guided in.
I then spoke to another Algerian man who had tipped off the police – he told me he hated sex offenders and the shame he felt over the whole episode.
The community had done the right thing – there were two tip-offs – one to me, one to the police.
The farce of this manhunt had gone on long enough.
UK
Nadjib, who tipped off police over released prisoner Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, tells Sky News he’s ‘happy to see him arrested’
“It’s him, it’s him, it’s him”, the man told me urgently.
While police were frantically searching in Finsbury Park for wanted sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, locals were telling me where he was.
Immediately after the dramatic arrest, filmed exclusively by Sky News we spoke to the North African man who tipped off the police.
Sky News filmed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s rearrest
Nadjib had been on the lookout for the convicted sex offender, who had been spending time in different parts of north London since his release from HMP Wandsworth.
He even had a folded-up newspaper clipping in his pocket so that he could check the picture himself.
He told Sky News he was “very happy when he got arrested”.
“I don’t like the sex offenders,” he said.
“I know him from the community. He has been around here every night since he was released from prison.”
Nadjib (L) told Sky’s Tom Parmenter he had been looking out for the offender
Not only did he tip the police off about the prisoner’s whereabouts, but he also witnessed the other high-profile manhunt that ended in the same park last month.
Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was also arrested in Finsbury Park after a 48-hour manhunt in the capital. He was then deported to Ethiopia.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif
“When he [Kebatu] got arrested in the park I was there,” Nadjib said.
I asked him why both men ended up in the same park in north London.
“Because the community, he came here for the community of Algerians,” he said.
Several Algerian people that I spoke to on Friday told me how shameful they thought it was that this sex offender was still on the run.
“Job done,” Nadjib said, before walking off.
UK
Alice Figueiredo: NHS trust and ward manager to be sentenced – over a decade after young patient’s death
An NHS trust and a ward manager will be sentenced next week for health and safety failings – more than a decade after a young woman died in a secure mental health hospital.
Warning: This article contains references to suicide.
Earlier this year, a jury found the North East London NHS Foundation Trust and ward manager Benjamin Aninakwa did not do enough to prevent Alice Figueiredo from killing herself.
The decisions were reached after the joint-longest jury deliberation in English legal history.
Alice was 22 years old when she took her own life at London’s Goodmayes Hospital in July 2015.
Her parents sat through seven months of difficult and graphic evidence – and told Sky News the experience retraumatised them.
Mother Jane Figueiredo
Jane Figueiredo said: “It’s very distressing, because you know that she’s been failed at every point all the way along, and you’re also reliving the suffering that she went through.
“It’s adding trauma on top of the wound that you’ve already got, the worst wound you can imagine, of losing your child.”
Step-father Max Figueiredo
Alice’s stepfather Max said he remains “appalled” that she died in a place they thought would care for her.
“The fact we have these repeated deaths of very young people in secure mental health units shocks me to the core. How can society look at that event and portray it as something that happens as a matter of course?”
Ms Figueiredo said Alice had predicted her own death.
“She said to us – out of fear really: ‘The only way I’m going to leave this ward is in a body bag.’
“It’s because she did not feel safe.”
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Alice had predicted her own death, her mother says
In a statement, the North East London NHS Foundation Trust said: “We are deeply sorry for Alice’s death, and we extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and loved ones.
“We have taken significant steps to continually improve the physical and social environment, deliberately designed to support recovery, safety, wellbeing, and assist our workforce in delivering compassionate care.”
For Alice’s family, the convictions have brought some justice, but they will never have complete closure.
“As a mum your bereavement doesn’t ever end, it changes over years as you go on, but it’s unending. The thought I won’t even hear her voice is unbearable and I still miss it. I still miss her voice,” Ms Figueiredo said.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
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