Your stories about RAAC concrete in schools make for chilling reading. Why has it taken until now for the government to act on this danger? They were told the problem was urgent back in 2018, but the industry was aware of problems back as early as the 1980s, and I believe that a Midlands polytechnic material sciences lab was actually testing this material for suspected durability problems, due to its porosity, water permeability and thus risk of reinforcement corrosion, as far back as 1975. This begs another question: why were schools built with RAAC still being opened in this century?
This is symptomatic of another disease – the government allowing schools to be thrown up quickly and cheaply using rubbish materials instead of insisting on quality construction. Before RAAC there was CLASP, which allowed very fast building but contained massive quantities of asbestos, so many of those schools have already had to be demolished.
Meanwhile, many solid pre-Second World War and even Victorian school buildings happily soldier on, often now converted to homes or community centres after education fashions changed. When will our government ever learn?
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies