Govt: Schools’ RAAC crisis is ‘not about funding’
Government minister Gareth Davies has insisted that the issue of RAAC within school buildings has not been caused by a lack of funding or investment into the upkeep and maintenance of schools. The exchequer secretary to the Treasury said that the issue has instead been caused by a change in advice into the safety of the building material.
More than 100 schools and colleges have been told by the Department for Education to fully or partially shut buildings following the collapse of a beam. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
More than 100 schools and colleges have been told by the Department for Education to fully or partially shut buildings following the collapse of a beam. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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NewsTranscript
00:00 There's £15 billion gone into school maintenance and building construction since 2015.
00:06 This is not about funding.
00:08 Schools have had significant resources.
00:10 This is about a change in the advice and the risk assessment of what was deemed non-critical
00:15 WRAC at the time.
00:17 We've changed that approach and that's why we're vacating schools at this point.
00:21 In 2018 there was a case where a school had a failure and on the back of that we issued
00:26 guidance to schools with WRAC, with suspected WRAC, to put in place mitigation and contingency
00:33 measures.
00:34 But what we've done, which is unlike other countries and other countries in the United
00:39 Kingdom, is assess where confirmed WRAC is by surveying all schools.
00:44 And so the fact that we know where WRAC is enables us to act as swiftly as we are with
00:49 an abundance of caution.