The Tories have sat on their hands for thirteen years – and now parents can’t be sure that their kids’ classrooms won’t fall down at any moment
It is shocking that just as schools go back for a new term, children and parents cannot be confident their classrooms will not fall down.
Shocking that ministers still do not even know how many school buildings might contain cheap, bubbly concrete which could give way at any moment. Yet the Tories have been warned about the dangers often enough.
Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete â or RAAC â has a limited lifespan because water can get into the tiny holes and corrode the metal bars holding it together. And when that happens, RAAC has the breaking strain of a matchstick. From the 1950s to 1990s, it was used not just for schools but in hospitals, prisons, military barracks and even homes.
Labour has called for an audit of buildings which used RAAC in a bid to ensure they do not now collapse. That could be a mammoth task on a similar scale to checking and replacing dangerous cladding on flats following the Grenfell fire disaster, which claimed 74 lives.