'Ticking timebomb in our schools and hospitals is closer to exploding'
As hundreds of schools across the country are forced to close, plunging education into chaos, a leading expert who originally described the situation - which also involves hospitals - as a "ticking time bomb", says it is ever-closer to exploding.
In recent days the Mirror has exclusively reported that 150 schools were told to shut their crumbling buildings due to being built with a specific type of concrete. The situation today appears chaotic with parents anxious to discover whether their schools are affected and a definitive list yet to be published by the government.
In an earlier exclusive, we previously revealed that hospitals had been gravely affected by the construction issue - where RAAC (Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) was beginning to crumble, prompting some wards to close and others to have their ceiling propped up. At the time one school had even been hit by collapse, fortunately at a weekend when no-one was present. We subsequently published the full list of NHS buildings built with a crumbling, lightweight version of concrete that’s long past its lifespan.
Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete was a cheaper, lightweight alternative to normal concrete that boomed in popularity and use from the 1960s to 1990s. During this time, swathes of the country’s schools were built with it - as were health service buildings and hospitals.
Two months ago we reported the concerns of Graham Hasting-Evans, president of the British Association of Construction Heads and chief executive of the National Open College Network, who described the issue as a “ticking time bomb” and said he’s worried decision-makers were “burying their heads in the sand”, when it comes to dealing with the problem.
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Even as schools are receiving notices to close, he remains concerned over the safety issues over the long-term failure to deal with RAAC in establishing its full usage and assessing wear and tear, meaning that "time bomb" is closer to going off. He said: “The risk is, they [hospitals] don’t know, the schools don’t know and that’s when they get a catastrophic event but you hope it won’t happen … we’re in the danger zone in terms of the times scale. It could be next week, it could be a Grenfell type incident when they [students] all go back to school."
Today Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the updated safety advice came after a concrete beam - which showed no sign of being unsafe - collapsed over the summer in one school. The National Education Union says the timing of closures is "absolutely disgraceful" and "a sign of gross incompetence".
RAAC has a set lifespan, after which its integrity comes into question. It was described by one NHS trust chief as like “chocolate aero” with one hospital employing hundreds of props to keep its roofs up. But Mr Hasting-Evans warned: “We haven’t got a time like five years to fix it, we’re in that risk zone. King’s Lynn has been relying on props for years now and they’re keeping it up, it’s not brilliant at all, but you can see from buildings built at a similar time at risk too.”
Graham Hasting-Evans, president of the British Association of Construction Heads
The dire state of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn as it's being held up by props in placesThe Mirror revealed how officials contacted around 100 schools before the start of term to tell them to immediately shut affected buildings unless safety measures are in place. Another 50 have been putting mitigations in place. The sheer severity of the risk faced in schools and hospitals was made evident just five years ago when a primary school roof in Kent collapsed.
Thankfully, it took place at the weekend, when no students were in, but Mr Hasting-Evans raised the worry that next time this wouldn’t be the case - and that decision-makers couldn’t keep banking on it not happening, but they had to take action sooner rather than later.
“It’s like burying your head in the sand, hoping it’ll go away, but it won’t go away,” he said.
The engineer by trade also described it as a “scary” and “significant” problem and pointed out that amidst the government’s promises to build 40 brand new hospitals, the issue “is fixing the problems with the existing stock of hospitals”.
RAAC has been described as like 'chocolate aero' (Getty Images/iStockphoto)He also acknowledged that, just as the Department of Education were shutting parts of, or entire, schools, hospitals could face a similar fate, putting further pressure on a struggling health service. The NHS is badly hit by RAAC use, with it spread over 19 separate sites with seven hospitals made “nearly exclusively”, in the words of one NHS chief, of the concrete.
The trusts affected have almost all put together plans for removing RAAC or, in some cases, rebuilding hospitals entirely - such is the extent of the problem. The situation is so bad that one hospital has deployed over 3,000 steel props to keep the roof up in 56 areas.
Others have introduced weight limits to operating theatres, whilst a document released by West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust said the NHS was flying in the dark using RAAC planks beyond their life-span, saying: “There is no published information regarding the performance of RAAC planks past the intended design life.”
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The final costs will run into the billions if the NHS hopes to deal with RAAC in its entirety - which is to factor in nothing of the costs of hundreds of schools. What makes things worse, is that whilst trusts wait for effective help that will properly solve the issue, they’re forced to splash millions on temporary sticking plasters.
West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust were forced to spend £74 million just shoring up the hospital instead of properly dealing with RAAC. Craig Black, speaking as then interim chief executive, said: “We are spending public money on making a building safe that is only going to last for a few years. I don’t skip home when I get told we have just been allocated £25m to spend on RAAC - £25m is a massive amount of money that could do some huge good for patient care. Instead we are spending that on shoring up a building that needs replacement. That’s not great.”
This sentiment was echoed by James Summer, chief exec of Liverpool University Hospitals, who told Cheshire East Council’s scrutiny committee that Leighton Hospital faced a similar problem of spending huge sums now, or even more further down the line. He outlined three choices that he believed his trust had to replace the 34,000 RAAC planks in the hospital. Replacing the tens of thousands of planks themselves would cost £660 million and take a decade to complete; replace the roof panels and build extra wards, costing £800 million, or build a new hospital entirely costing £600 million.
Three operating theatres at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn had to be shut after staff noticed the ceiling itself was moving. Similarly, at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridge, two operating theatres were temporarily shuttered to patients heavier than 120kg.
The situation is similarly dire in schools, where the Department of Education is racing to mitigate the chaos caused by the RAAC.
Earlier this week, the Mirror revealed that the government told schools affected to prepare “for the eventuality that they are taken out of use and vacated at short notice” until they can be made safe. School chiefs were given just days to put these together as they were asked “what it would take to implement that plan ahead of the start of term”.
Confederation of School Trusts Chief Executive Leora Cruddas CBE said: "This is a very serious situation and it couldn’t be more disruptive at the start of a new academic year. However, children’s safety must come first so the government is right to proceed with caution. It is absolutely imperative that the operational response from the DfE is as strong as possible and that this gets schools and trusts the help they need in this extremely challenging circumstances."
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The NHS has a mitigation plan in place for hospital buildings with confirmed RAAC, backed with significant additional funding of £698 million from 2021 to 2025, for trusts to put in place necessary remediation and failsafe measures. We remain committed to eradicating RAAC from the NHS estate entirely by 2035. Additionally, we have announced that the seven most affected NHS hospitals will be replaced by 2030 through our New Hospital Programme. The technical advice received from the NHS is that the current approach to monitoring and mitigation remains appropriate.”
Meanwhile a Department of Education spokesperson said they would not comment on the documents seen by the Mirror, but said: “Where we confirm [RAAC] is present, we work with individual education settings on how to manage RAAC and develop contingency plans to minimise any disruption to education.”
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