And a mad scramble right at the start of a new school year, to find alternatives. We have three companies coming out today that are trying to help us procure temporary classrooms. We dont know yet whether we have managed to get any, and how long they will take to be delivered. But we are obviously flat out working on it. 104 schools have so far found themselves having to close entirely or partially because of unsafe raac concrete. This morning, the Education Secretary said there could be hundreds more affected, as the government was still waiting to hear from 1,500 schools about whether they have this concrete in their buildings. There will be some surveys still to do. The vast majority of surveys we do come back without raac. But where we find it, we will treat everyone as critical, and we will either prop them up or put temporary accommodation into place. And then we will refurbish or rebuild them if needed. Labour accused the government putting childrens lives at risk, as a former C
Pretty quickly afterwards. Well come to that in a moment. First to the actual problem. A type of concrete in schools that can crumble. It means some parts of School Buildings can be unsafe. The Prime Minister had to defend his decisions, as he was accused of not investing enough in school repairs. Heres our Political Editor chris mason. You probably hadnt heard of it until the other day, but this stuff concrete that can get crumbly is building into a political mess. Did rishi sunak, when he was chancellor, walk away from repairs happening sooner . The man who used to be the Department For Educations most senior Civil Servant reckons he did. I was absolutely amazed to see that the decision made by the government was to halve the School Rebuilding programme down from 100 a year to 50 a year. The chancellor, of course, was at the time . Rishi sunak. So, what does the Prime Minister make of that . I think that is completely and utterly wrong. Actually, one of the first things i did as chan
Lets start with the story thats dominated the uk Political Agenda for the last few days. Rishi sunak says its Utterly Wrong to blame him forfailing to tackle the issue of unsafe concrete in school buldings. As thousands of children return to classrooms today after the summer break, its emerged that more than a hundred schools in england and scotland will be closed or partially shut. Its over Safety Concerns about what is known as raac a type of concrete, thats known to be at risk of crumbling. Our Political Editor chris mason reports on a busy first day back for mps. You probably hadnt heard of it until the other day, but this stuff concrete that can get crumbly is building into a political mess. Did rishi sunak, when he was chancellor, walk away from repairs happening sooner . The man who used to be the Department For Educations most senior Civil Servant reckons he did. I was absolutely amazed to see that the decision made by the government was to halve the School Rebuilding programme
The man who used to be the Department For Educations most senior Civil Servant reckons he did. I was absolutely amazed to see that the decision made by the government was to halve the School Rebuilding programme down from 100 a year to 50 a year. The chancellor, of course, was at the time . Rishi sunak. So, what does the Prime Minister make of that . I think that is completely and utterly wrong. Actually, one of the first things i did as chancellor in my first Spending Review in 2020 was to announce a new ten year School Rebuilding programme for 500 schools. Now, that equates to about 50 schools a year that will be refurbished or rebuilt. And if you look at what weve been doing over the previous decade, thats completely in line with what weve always done. This Secondary School in County Durham was meant to open for the new term tomorrow, but it cant because of dangerous concrete. In both 2020 and 2021, the government promised 50 schools a year would be rebuilt. In 2019, the National Au