Ministers still do not know how much the concrete crisis will cost to repair, the schools minister has admitted, as he rejected accusations by the head of the UK spending watchdog that the government had adopted a “sticking plaster approach” to essential maintenance.
Nick Gibb said he and ministers were unable to come up with a figure because every school affected by the problem of crumbling reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) experienced it in different ways.
“In some schools it will just be a room or a cupboard … in others it will be pervasive throughout a school,” he added.
Gibb said he “didn’t recognise” claims this week by the Department for Education’s (DfE) former head civil servant that Rishi Sunak had refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was “a critical risk to life” from crumbling concrete panels.
After the department told Sunak’s Treasury that there was a need to rebuild 300 to 400 schools a year in England, he gave funding for only 100, which was then halved to 50, said Jonathan Slater, who was the permanent secretary of the department from 2016 to 2020.
Although most of the schools found to have Raac have been in England, institutions in Scotland and Wales have also been identified with it. Schools in Northern Ireland are also being investigated.
Gibb told broadcasters on Tuesday morning that he had checked with officials on Monday and insisted the claim was wrong, but that he and others involved had asked for 200.
“Fifty school buildings a year is what the system can cope with and of course we put in a bid for 200. Of course, the Treasury has bids from all those other priorities across Whitehall,” he added.
One other former senior DfE official told the Guardian this week there had always been an expectation of a cut to the original bid for 300 to 400 schools. “But the eventual decision to go for 100, and then cut this to 50, was a real surprise,” they said.
The official likened Sunak’s decision to his choice in 2021 to slash a planned budget for helping children catch up educationally after Covid from £15bn to £1.4bn.
Gibb on Tuesday also said that he “took seriously” but did not agree with an intervention by Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office (NAO), who suggested there had not been sufficient focus on “unflashy but essential tasks” such as maintaining public buildings that have faced “underinvestment”.
“The underlying challenge is that adequately funding responsible capital programmes for our public services leaves less for higher-profile projects. Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking plaster approach,” Davies wrote in the Times.
Amid continuing concern about the wider impact of the crisis, the chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales said it would be “enormously concerning” if Raac concrete was found in prison buildings, as prison space is already in short supply and closing parts off “isn’t an option”.
Charlie Taylor told Times Radio: “Why this is particularly critical in the case of prisons is that we’re running out of alternatives at the moment to put prisoners anyway.”
“We have a huge amount of prisoners coming into the system and a limited amount of places … And if this were to become an issue, if Raac were to become an issue within prisons, then it would be enormously concerning.”
Asked if the situation in England’s schools could be resolved by Christmas, Gibb said: “I suspect that will be all sorted out far sooner than Christmas.
“We know that the 52 schools that we’ve already sent in … alternative accommodation has been found, mitigation, propping, whatever it is, has all happened in those 52 schools. I expect the same thing to happen in the remaining 104 schools,” he told LBC.
The number of schools – currently 156 – affected by the issue would increase as surveys continued to come back but it was about 1% that were being identified on the basis of previous returns, he said.
The DfE’s response to the crumbling concrete crisis has been “world leading”, Gibb claimed, as the government continued to be haunted by a sweary outburst by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, after an interview on Monday. Keegan has apologised after being caught swearing on camera while expressing frustration about the crisis, claiming that “everyone else has sat on their arse” while she tried to fix the problem.
Asked about this, Gibb told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This was an off-the-cuff comment. She’s apologised for the language used. What she was trying to get across is the huge amount of work that the DfE has done.
