By Harry Mottram: As pupils and students return to study this week the leader of Bath & North East Somerset Council Cllr Kevin Guy, has moved to reassure parents that Bath schools are not hit by the Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) crisis.
He said: “As the new school term starts this week I want to reassure parents and young people that we have worked with the Department for Education and can confirm that there is no RAAC in our four council-maintained community schools. While academies and church schools are responsible for carrying out their checks, I want to offer reassurance that we would support any affected schools should they need assistance. The council’s maintenance team is not aware of any council buildings that have the same material, but we are reviewing this.”
The issue first came to light in 2018 when part of the roof above the staff room at Singlewell Primary School in Gravesend, Kent, collapsed with RAAC seen as the culprit. The lightweight building material has been used as a cheap alternative to steel, concrete, stone and timber in a variety of mainly public buildings from the 1950s until the mid 1990s. Since 1994 inspectors began to survey buildings with the material but pressure mounted this year on the Education Secretary from trade unions, Labour and the The National Audit Office. Then this summer The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announced: “Raac is now life-expired. It is liable to collapse with little or no notice.” That prompted the Government into the dramatic announcement on August 31 that there could be as many as 150 schools that had the problem.
Since then, numerous schools across the country have had to make emergency provision for teaching while other buildings have been affected such as St David’s Hall in Cardiff and Harrow Crown Court in Greater London. In the South West, Selworthy Special School in Taunton has one classroom affected, while in Bristol, North Somerset, Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire checks are taking place on schools and other public buildings.
The BBC have a report on the crisis which includes a video explaining why the material is subject to sudden collapse. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66690256
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