Minister admits Sunak did reject bid to rebuild 200 crumbling schools a year
A Tory minister has admitted Rishi Sunak DID reject a bid to rebuild 200 schools a year as Chancellor - after Mr Sunak claimed it was "utterly wrong" to blame him for the dodgy concrete crisis.
Schools chief Nick Gibb confirmed the Department for Education (DfE) had asked for cash to refurbish 150 more schools than they had been doing a year in 2021. But the Treasury rejected the bid. It comes after a bombshell intervention from ex-top official Jonathan Slater, who said Mr Sunak rejected calls to repair more schools despite warnings from officials of a "critical risk to life" from dodgy school buildings.
A bitter blame game has erupted in recent days, as ministers scramble to pass the buck over failures to remove reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) from school buildings. With thousands of children shut out of the classroom, bungling Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was caught on camera on Monday moaning that she had done a “f****** good job” while others “have been sat on their a***s.
The Prime Minister said yesterday it was "completely and utterly wrong" to blame him, adding: "One of the first things I did as Chancellor, in my first spending review in 2020, was to announce a new 10-year school re-building programme for 500 schools. Now that equates to about 50 schools a year, that will be refurbished or rebuilt.
Today, Mr Gibb told Sky News: “We put in a bid for 200, but what Rishi agreed to was to continue the rebuilding programme at 50 a year, consistent with what we’ve been doing since we came into office. Fifty school buildings a year is what the system can cope with, and of course we put in a bid for 200, but the Treasury then has to compare that bid with all the other priorities right across Whitehall.”
Schools boss Gillian Keegan says she's doing 'f***ing good job' in hot mic gaffe
It comes as Britain's top spending watchdog said chaos in Britain's crumbling schools is a result of the Tories' "sticking plaster approach" to maintenance. National Audit Office chief Gareth Davies said the Government would end up wasting money on repairs after neglecting "unflashy" work on school buildings - despite warnings over the use of dodgy concrete.
“The underlying challenge is that adequately funding responsible capital programmes for our public services leaves less for higher profile projects,” Mr Davies wrote in The Times. “Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking plaster approach."
Mr Gibb, who has been in post for 10 of the Tories’ 13 years in power, rejected Mr Davies’ criticism. He told the BBC : “We take any official report from the National Audit Office extremely seriously, but I don’t agree with his comments in his article. We are spending £1.8billion a year on maintenance and improvements to the school structure."
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