RAAC concrete crisis: UK govt vows to ‘spend what it takes’ to deal with crumbling school buildings
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, on Sunday (September 3) vowed to “spend what it takes” to deal with the crumbling school buildings and said that the United Kingdom government will move to fix the unsafe infrastructure quickly. This comes days after more than 100 schools across England were forced to shut down over safety concerns as they were found to be made with a certain type of concrete that is prone to collapse.
‘Extremely quickly’
In interviews with the British media, on Sunday morning, Hunt said that the majority of the 104 affected schools will be able to operate largely normally. “We will spend what it takes to sort out this problem as quickly as possible,” the British finance minister told BBC.
Last week, the UK government issued an order to around 104 schools or “settings” – out of the more than 20,000 schools in England – that require urgent action after they were said to have been made with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete or RAAC and found to be at risk of collapse.
The announcement has left the institutes scrambling to make arrangements to continue teaching and angered parents as the order was issued days before the start of the autumn term, as per British media reports.
Fearof asbestos amid RAAC crisis
During the interviews on Sunday, Hunt also admitted that the government is also in the midst of responding to the longstanding asbestos problem in schools that is believed to be present in some of the same buildings affected by the RAAC concrete. This could further complicate the matter.
“We have 22,000 schools in the country and there has been since that incident a huge programme going through this Raac/asbestos issue because we want to be absolutely sure that every child is safe,” Hunt told Sky News after being asked if parents could be confident their child would be safe.
What is the concrete issuein UK about?
The UK government has also come under fire as they are yet to release the list of the schools affected while British Education Secretary Gillian Keegan previously said that the affected schools would contact parents directly and that “If you don’t hear, don’t worry.”
This has also prompted demands for transparency over the extent of the consequences of RAAC in public buildings over the weekend.
The RAAC is essentially a lightweight form of concrete which according to the UK government’s website was used to build roofs, schools, colleges and other buildings from the 1950s until the mid-1990s, but has since been found to be at risk of collapse.
It has also been described as “80 per cent air” and is said to have a lifespan of around 30 years. Shadow education secretary from the opposition Labour Party Bridget Phillipson took to X (formerly Twitter) and said, “The government has spent the summer sitting on its hands as the concrete crumbles in our schools.”
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