Ministers told to ‘come clean with parents’ and publish full list of schools impacted by concrete safety fears
Labour’s shadow education secretary has called for the government to publish a full list of schools being forced to close because of fears over the safety of their buildings.
It comes after the government announced school buildings in England made with a certain type of concrete prone to collapse will be closed immediately.
Around 104 schools or “settings” are set to be disrupted – on top of 52 that have already been affected this year.
However, the government has refused to publicly reveal the facilities, which have buildings constructed with the material 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.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson
Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, says the government should publish a full list of impacted facilities and “come clean with parents and set out the full scale of the challenge that we’re facing”.
“They are still not being upfront about it,” she said.
Read more:
How will I know if my child’s school is being closed?
“They should publish that full list, come clean to parents and make sure that all our children can avoid this kind of disruption.
“They’ve already faced so much lost learning [as a result of COVID], this has to be different.”
‘Could be the tip of the iceberg’
Critics, meanwhile, have warned the problems with RAAC could be even wider than so far outlined, with the Unison union’s head of education, Mike Short, warning the issue could “just be the tip of the iceberg”.
The Department for Education (DfE) have insisted that the vast majority of schools and colleges “will be unaffected” and that the issue is “isolated” to the 156 schools identified as having buildings containing RAAC.
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‘Most parents should not be worried’
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.
However, the department has said a “minority” will need to “either fully or partially relocate” to alternative accommodation such as nearby schools, community centres or “empty local office buildings” while safety measures are installed.
Schools have also been advised that pandemic-style remote education should only be considered as a “last resort and for a short period”.
According to guidance from the DfE, funding will only be provided for works that are “capital funded” and schools will have to pay for rental costs for emergency or temporary accommodation.
‘Safety-first approach’
“We’re taking a very safety-first approach and we’re really being cautious here,” said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.
“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’
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, described the news as “shocking”, but added: “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 councils 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.
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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 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.
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The UK has signed a long-awaited deal to hand control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
It means Britain will give up sovereignty of the Indian Ocean territory and lease back the vital UK-US Diego Garcia military base – at a cost of billions of pounds to the taxpayer.
Politics Live: Starmer signs deal to hand over UK control of Chagos Islands to Mauritius
In a news conference, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the base is of the “utmost significance to Britain”, having been used to deploy aircraft to “defeat terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan”, and “anticipate threats in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific”.
He said the base was under threat because of Mauritius’s legal claim on the Chagos Islands, which has been recognised by multiple international courts.
“If we did not agree this deal, the legal situation would mean that we would not be able to prevent China or any other nation setting up their own bases on the outer islands, or carrying out joint exercises near our base,” Sir Keir said.
“We would have to explain to you, the British people and to our allies, that we’d lost control of this vital asset.
“No responsible government could let that happen, so there’s no alternative but to act in Britain’s national interest by agreeing to this deal.
“We will never gamble with national security.”
Aerial view of Diego Garcia in the Chagos Island group. Pic: AP
The deal means the UK will lease the base from the Mauritian government over 99 years.
Confusion over costs
Sir Keir said the average cost per year is £101m but the net overall cost is £3.4bn, not £10bn, and all public sector projects are measured in net costs.
However, there is confusion over the government’s calculations as the full agreement between the UK and Mauritius reveals the UK will pay:
• £165m a year for the first three years;
• £120m for years four to 13;
• £120m plus inflation for every year after to year 99;
• £40m as a one-off to a fund for Chagossians;
• £45m a year for 25 years for Mauritian development.
If inflation were to remain zero for the next century, this would work out to around £10bn over 99 years.
Assuming an average of 2% inflation, Sky News analysis suggests costs could rise as high as £30bn.
Downing Street stood by its figures, saying government accounting principles were applied to adjust for long-term costs and the value of the pound today is worth more than the pound in the future.
Officials denied suggestions from journalists that was financial sophistry, insisting it was “standard practice”.
Sir Keir said that had he not struck the deal today, Mauritius would have taken the UK to international courts and probably won, with extra penalties implemented.
However the Tories – who started negotiations in government – have branded the move a “surrender tax”.
Keir Starmer
Sovereignty row
The Chagos Archipelago was separated from Mauritius by the UK in 1965, when Mauritius was a British colony.
Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968 and since then has been trying to claim the archipelago as Mauritian.
In the late 1960s, the US asked the UK to expel everyone from the archipelago so they could build a naval support facility on the largest island, Diego Garcia. It is leased to the US but operates as a joint UK-US base.
The UK has been under pressure to hand back control of the territory, after the UN and the International Court of Justice sided with Mauritius.
The treaty said the deal would “complete the process of decolonisation of Mauritius”.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said that “surrendering” the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “is an act of national self-harm”.
“It leaves us more exposed to China, and ignores the will of the Chagossian people. And we’re paying billions to do so,” she said.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage echoed those comments, accusing Sir Keir of caring more about foreign courts “than Britain’s national interest”.
The location of the Chagos Islands
‘Deal inherited from Tories’
However, Sir Keir said he “inherited a negotiation in which the principle of giving up UK sovereignty had already been conceded” by the Tories.
He said “all of the UK’s allies” support the deal, including the US, NATO, Five Eyes and India, and that those who are against it include “Russia, China, Iran…and surprisingly, the leader of the opposition, and Nigel Farage”.
Defence Secretary John Healey, who was also at the news conference, added that the last government failed to strike a deal despite 11 rounds of talks, leaving Labour to “pick up the challenge”.
He said ministers “toughened the terms and the protections and the control that Britain can exercise through this treaty”.
Under the deal’s terms, a 24-nautical mile buffer zone will be put in place around the island where nothing can be built or placed without UK consent.
The UK will retain full operational control of Diego Garcia, including the electromagnetic spectrum satellite used for communications which counters hostile interference.
Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said he welcomed the “historic agreement”, saying it “secures the long-term, stable and effective operation of the joint US-UK military facility at Diego Garcia, which is critical to regional and global security”.
“We value both parties’ dedication. The US looks forward to our continued joint work to ensure the success of our shared operations,” he said.
The agreement had been due to be signed on Thursday morning but was temporarily blocked by an injunction hours before. A High Court Judge subsequently discharged the injunction at midday.
UK
Passengers injured after train hits trailer on level crossing near Leominster – as police arrest man
More than a dozen people have been injured after a train hit an agricultural trailer on a level crossing in Herefordshire, according to emergency services.
British Transport Police (BTP) said officers were called to the site north of Leominster at 10.40am on Thursday.
A man has been airlifted to hospital and a woman has also been taken to hospital.
A further 15 people, who were passengers on the train, were assessed by paramedics but discharged at the scene, West Midlands Ambulance Service said.
A spokesperson confirmed that nobody from the tractor-trailer required assessment.
Police have confirmed that a 32-year-old man from Bromyard has been arrested on suspicion of endangering safety on the railway.
Firefighters and officers from West Mercia Police also attended the scene.
A spokesperson for Transport for Wales (TfW) confirmed its 8.30am service between Manchester Piccadilly and Cardiff Central hit an “obstruction” at a crossing between Ludlow and Leominster.
All lines between the Hereford and Craven Arms stations are blocked and trains will not run between the two.
Replacement road transport is being put in place and TfW tickets are currently being accepted by Northern, Avanti, GWR and CrossCountry, it said.
Disruption is expected to last until the end of the day and a spokesperson for the company advised anyone travelling on Thursday to check before they travel.
A spokesperson for West Midlands Ambulance Service said it was “called to an incident on the railway track at Nordan Farm, Leominster, at 10.46am”.
“On arrival crews found a man who was a passenger on the train, they treated him for non-life threatening injuries before conveying him by air ambulance to Hereford County Hospital,” they added.
“A woman was also treated for injuries not believed to be serious and conveyed by land ambulance to Hereford County Hospital.”
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said it had sent a team of inspectors to Leominster “between a passenger train and an agricultural trailer at a user worked level crossing”, which require people to operate the crossing themselves.
“Our inspectors will gather evidence as part of the process of conducting a preliminary examination and a decision on whether an investigation will be launched will be taken in the coming days,” the spokesperson added.
British Transport Police said its enquiries were ongoing into the full circumstances of the incident.
The economy will have to be “strong enough” for the government to U-turn on winter fuel payment cuts, the business secretary has said.
Jonathan Reynolds, talking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, also said the public would have to “wait for the actual budget” to make an announcement on it.
You can listen to the full interview on tomorrow’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast.
Sir Keir Starmer said on Wednesday he would ease the cut to the winter fuel payment, which has been removed from more than 10 million pensioners this winter after it became means-tested.
He and his ministers had insisted they would stick to their guns on the policy, even just hours before Sir Keir revealed his change of heart at Prime Minister’s Questions.
But Mr Reynolds revealed there is more at play to be able to change the policy.
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Winter fuel payment cuts to be reversed
“The economy has got to be strong enough to give you the capacity to make the kind of decisions people want us to see,” he said.
“We want people to know we’re listening.
“All the prime minister has said is ‘look, he’s listening, he’s aware of it.
“He wants a strong economy to be able to deliver for people.
“You’d have to wait for the actual budget to do that.”
Read more:
Gordon Brown suggests people on top income tax rate should be excluded from winter fuel
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed to just one major fiscal event a year, meaning just one annual budget in the autumn.
Autumn budgets normally take place in October, with the last one at the end of the month.
If this year’s budget is around the same date it will leave little time for the extra winter fuel payments to be made as they are paid between November and December.
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