In one hospital, heavy patients must be treated on the ground floor because the combined weight with equipment is too heavy to be safe.

Meg Hillier, Chairwoman of Public Accounts Committee

It takes a lot to shock members of the Commons public accounts committee. In our review of major government programmes we see many costly failures. But in late July members visited two hospitals built with RAAC, a lightweight form of concrete cast in planks, and it was jaw-dropping.

We had held a hearing on RAAC in schools a week before but seeing the real-life impact was eye-opening — and alarming. In one hospital, staff can carry out roof maintenance only if they and their tools are below a certain weight. Heavy patients must be treated on the ground floor because the combined weight with equipment is too heavy to be safe. Roof failure is a daily risk.

The issue of RAAC in schools was first identified as a significant problem after a roof collapse in 2018. But it was as far back as 1999 when the standing committee on structural safety recommended that all buildings with pre-1980 RAAC plank roofs should be inspected. So why was action not taken earlier?

The most recent survey of stock condition of schools in England was in its early stages in 2017 and, with fractured ownership of school buildings and varied skills and resources at local level, there was too little oversight in Whitehall of the shared risks and potential costs across the estate. It wasn’t until 2020 that the current school rebuilding programme was established.

The problems with RAAC are concentrated in schools built between the mid-1950s and 1980s. It is not a coincidence that nearly three quarters of the schools in the poorest condition were built between 1951 and 1980. Funding is undoubtedly an issue. The longer schools are expected to operate beyond their expected life, the more they cost to maintain. Between 2016 and 2023, around three quarters of funding for buildings was spent on maintenance and repair. The Department for Education argued that £7 billion a year would be the best-practice level of annual capital funding. It asked the Treasury in 2020 for £4 billion a year and was allocated £3.1 billion. So even on its own estimates there is not enough funding to do the necessary work.

The impact of this week’s announcement on the wider school maintenance and replacement programmes is likely to be significant. At our hearing in July it was clear that officials were being thorough with the proportion of school buildings they were working on, including the surveys of 600 schools with RAAC which have led to this week’s decision. But this is the tip of the iceberg of a failing school estate in England. Most of the 700,000 pupils currently being educated in substandard buildings are not in RAAC buildings and will now be waiting longer for the improvements they need.

There are 500 “slots” in the school rebuilding programme and 100 unallocated which were set aside to respond to the very issues that have led to school closures this week.

The permanent secretary at the DfE told the public accounts committee in July that “if there is something that is putting students or teachers in danger that the school cannot manage itself, we will act immediately”. Ministers have done that — and rightly so. But this last-minute scramble just before term starts could have been avoided with longer-term planning, a coherent school-building programme and sustainable funding.