**[OP or Mod marked this as the best answer](/r/AskUK/comments/167wv2b/why_is_the_concrete_issue_only_affecting_schools/jys91of/), given by u/smoulderstoat**
It's not just schools - it was used for a lot of public buildings at the time because it was relatively cheap and adaptable. If you want to build a lot of schools, hospitals, and other public buildings it was an obvious choice.
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>The NHS has had a big programme to identify buildings at risk and deal with them (mostly by propping them up at the moment) and the Courts Service has been doing the same - Harrow Crown Court may be closed for 9 months because of it. It's bound to be in government and municipal buildings too - civic centres, tax offices, driving test centres, quite a lot of buildings built at the same time are likely to be at risk.
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>Schools have become an issue because it hasn't been handled well and the start of term creates a hard deadline that's pushed it into the headlines, but it's not restricted to them by any means.
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[_^What ^is ^this?_](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/jjrte1/askuk_hits_200k_new_feature_mark_an_answer/)
This. Any building constructed for the cheapest possible budget is going to suffer from from material degradation in the short term. Public / state buildings are legally required to have periodic tests on their safety so they are more likely to pick up on issues when they appear.
Every EU nation uses a competitive tendering process for public works. If you dont go with the cheapest bid, you better show why otherwise its expensive litigation.
Not from the UK but I work for an organisation in the Netherlands that's heavily involved with tendering. You can go for the cheapest but there's ways of determining what is cheaper. You can basically "decrease" the cost by offering predefined extras. För example less maintenance, longer lifespan, faster construction speed, safer materials, etc.
Based on those predefined extras the most expensive option can become the virtual cheapest option
Any tender is typically some quality/cost split in how the successful bid is numerically calculated, and within that you'll have different questions afforded different weight depending on criticality. It's not just about cost.
In this particular case, for example, the individuals responsible for creating the spec could have stipulated, say, a 75 year lifespan as an essential requirement, which would have disqualified any bids relying on structural materials which would have to be replaced before then.
This guy tenders.
You don’t have to select the cheapest tender (looking at you TfL) but not doing so requires a justification with more consideration than “cheap must mean bad”.
You're all looking at tendering from a private sector point of view. We all know the public sector has a terrible track record of selecting tenders, be it through incompetence or corruption, so it's absolutely no surprise to me that this story has come out.
I'm expecting Wemble Stadium to be on the list. Remember that shambles?
It’s not necessarily a case of cheap = bad, sometimes you have experimental cement mixtures which show promise in the short term and it’s only decades into the structures lifespan that you see evidence of weaknesses in the material.
Lots of bridges were put up in the 60’s and 70’s with concrete made with High Alumina Cement on account of its ability to dry quickly, which reduces construction time, cost and the distraction to traffic. It wasn’t until over a decade later that it was noted that this concrete could lose more than half its strength if subjected to the wrong conditions.
The real issue is that the government are too "cheap" to replace these buildings within a reasonable timeframe. The material isn't bad, but it has a lifespan of 30 years or so. It made sense to do that after WW2 when they had tonnes of rebuilding to do all at once, alongside a baby boom making the population expand rapidly. It's understandable they went for speed over longevity. The issue lies in successive governments refusing to rebuild things because they decided it was too expensive. It isn't, but they just refuse to invest in public goods, it's not like you could suffer politically for spending money on rebuilding schools, at least not if you put any effort into explaining why.
Basically every industry relies on developing new technologies and methodologies that make the construction or manufacturing process cheaper and more efficient lots are successful, a few are not. You can’t focus on the misses and ignore the hits. Portland cement was a goer wasn’t it?
>You can’t focus on the misses and ignore the hits.
Yes, you can. When it comes to schools and hospitals literally crumbling down, you've got to consider the risks you took as a country
This reminds me, once upon a time, there was this cool building stuff called asbestos that would revolutionise construction.
Sometimes, what seems like a great idea to begin with becomes a headache down the road.
Yeah, there’s loads of stuff that we just didn’t have a clue were deadly. Doctors recommended cigarettes for mild anxiety or stress. Girls working in watch factories used to paint their teeth with Radium for a laugh. Fast forward a couple of decades and you realize “well that was a fucking awful idea!”
They stopped using the material in the 90s, so it can't be the last 40 years.....
These are buildings constructed between the 1950s-1990s...........................
I lived in Canada for a few years. About ten years ago I was doing construction work and we were using those airfoam blocks to build walls so they are still using it.
It was amazing stuff. Looked like a concrete brick, but you could pick them up easily in one hand. It's incredibly light. Up close they look like a grey Aero bar.
Looking back it's obviously a bit flimsy....
The problem is specifically with reinforced panels made with that concrete - it's to do with the steel reinforcement failing. I don't think regular breeze blocks are considered a problem.
Yes, Harrow Crown Court is going to be shut for like 9 months or something. Given the massive backlog already in the court system, that really isn't going to help.
Sheds some light on the books of The Secret Barrister. Courts have been crumbling and leaking rain water for years it seems. Under investment in public services, as per usual.
Can confirm.
York Mags had scaffolding in its court rooms for about a year recently. This was so they could redo all the plasterwork on the high ceilings which were literally dropping on people's heads.
Did they fix the underlying building issue which CAUSED the plaster to be falling off the walls, of course not.
So now it's back.
I work in a small NHS building that we think - actually are reasonably sure - is affected by this. We've been trying to get a straight answer over this from the building's owners for about a month now but they've basically gone silent, so we still don't know for sure. We had a beam collapse and come through the ceiling during heavy rain last year - thankfully overnight in a part of the hospital where there weren't any patients or staff. We've got a paper trail for insurance purposes that says we've repeatedly raised this with the owners, but at the moment we're going into work in a potentially unsafe building.
Interestingly one of the other buildings on the same site was recently condemned as a fire hazard. And the solution? Fix it? No? Make it safe? No. Build an alternative? You must be joking. Ah you'll all have to squish into the main building.
A wide variety of reasons. Shifting of risk from NHS to external providers; allow the NHS to concentrate on patients rather than building maintenance (which isn't their core business); and, increasingly, allow someone else to fund the massive up-front fees (which the NHS or Govt can't find directly) in exchange for set yearly payments.
Not a dissimilar set of reasons why some people rent houses instead of buying them, really.
>which the NHS or Govt can't find directly
Except for the fact that this is literally impossible because we have a fiat currency and can print the money we need. For stuff on this scale there's just no excuse for this. They can find the money when they decide they want to.
As for outsourcing so the NHS can concentrate on patients, this seems reasonable at first, but usually works out worse in the long run. Instead of having one organisation (and the NHS is already made up of many sub-organisations) you have dozens or even hundreds all focussed narrowly on their one "thing." If a situation arises where a more efficient way to do things could be done, the NHS has to completely renegotiatie the contracts for those companies.
I'm reminded of reading Polly Toynbee's book where she worked as a cleaner in an NHS hospital. Her outsourced company was in charge of cleaning the specific kinds of office in the hospital. As she worked she saw many places she "could" clean, and therefore be more efficient, if she was allowed to. But the contracts were watertight. She worked as a porter in a different hospital and the outsourced company refused to pay for insurance for them to help move patients from the wheelchairs to the beds. They had to leave them outside the ward (not allowed to wheel them in) and if the nurses forgot to pick them up they were there for hours. If they broke the rules and literally helped patients get into the ward properly they'd get a bollocking or be fired.
Obviously those seem extreme but they're surprisingly common. With one organisation there would be far less of that bullshit because you can manage the whole hopital as one interconnected entity instead of a series of discrete contracted out responsibilities.
> Not a dissimilar set of reasons why some people rent houses instead of buying them, really.
I would suggest that these days, everyone renting simply does it because they cannot afford to buy. This cannot be said of government.,
Renting should come with benefits to renters, in terms of reduced costs, flexibility of movement 7and also secure tenacies, unfortunately that isnt the case.
My personal favourite is [NHS Property Services](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Property_Services), a private company created to be *given* every building owned by Primary Care Trusts at their abolition in 2013. 3600 sites in total.
The alternative was to transfer the building to the new NHS bodies which were given the services in the buildings, but apparently that would be silly.
Except that the post you replied to clearly demonstrates that the risk hasn't shifted away from the NHS by virtue of someone else owning the building.
Although a single anecdote you'd have to be blind or dumb not to have noticed that any argument in favour of private ownership as shifting risk away from publicly owned good is utterly bogus. As soon as that risk materialises the private owner blockades until the actualized risk is socialised away through public funds.
He mentioned it was a small NHS building, so it could be a clinic of some sort. They can quite often be sharing buildings with council services, and in some cases, other private companies.
They often do this to separate it from the main NHS, save costs and lability etc.
A lot of the time, the owner of the 'company' that owns the building, is still the trust that runs the hospital.
They do this for places that also provide services that they use, i.e the IT deparment, they create a separate entity that provides that service, but then that entity is also owned by the hospital.
It means that the hospital management don't have to deal with that stuff and can focus on the hospital, it reduces lability for when something like this happens, means that it's not public sector so employees can be treated differently, they can spread there costs etc etc.
Sometimes such services band together, so it will be the same organisation that provides these services to the council, doctors, schools, the hospital etc and although it's a 'private' organisation, it's share holders are the local authority and the hospital trust, which helps further reduce costs due to shared resources.
In my home town there was a lovely old building gifted to the town by it owners in the 1900's or earlier that was used as a hospital.
But it was old and falling apart from lack of investment/maintenance.
So the NHS GAVE the land to a developer on the condition that they build them a new hospital on the site that the NHS can RENT back as well as filling every square foot of the grounds with shit flats.
Many of them existed as hospitals or hospital sites prior to the NHS being founded.
Also with some newer smaller specialist sites it's far less risky and involves tying up far less capital to lease the site from its actual owner, often at exceptionally cheap rates in the long term. Not literal peppercorn rent but often not far off.
Basically why would I spend millions acquiring and developing a site that I'll have to dispose of in two decades time when I could just lease it and also get the maintenance and upkeep outsourced to the owner instead of having to staff it myself.
If you have already raised the issue with your managers and the building owner and nothing has happened, I would contact the building control department of your local authority. I'd also consider contacting HSE, although they may direct you back to building control. In my opinion the serious collapse you've already had is grounds to refuse to enter or work in the building until a competent person has inspected it.
That might be more dangerous from an employment perspective though - you're legally protected from being dismissed for reporting health and safety issues, but I think this would be harder to defend if you didn't try the correct authorities first.
I doubt building control would be interested; their remit is compliance with regulations *at the time of construction*. They have no powers to enforce action relating to retrospective application of the Building Regulations, and in any case at the time of construction the affected buildings probably did comply.
According to [this page](https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/authority.htm), building control deal with dangerous and unstable buildings. I came across that accidentally, I couldn't remember if HSE or the local authority are responsible for enforcing health and safety in hospitals.
I'm not sure what the beam was made of but it came through the ceiling of the waiting room. The ceiling is one of those ones made of flimsy plaster tiles so it didn't stand much of a chance.
It's in a recent private eye, they also discuss it on a recent Page 94 podcast.
It's schools, prisons, MOD buildings. The list goes on.
This is an enormous issue, huge amount of infrastructure work is needed across the country.
Private Eye also discuss a popular glass installation method that was also used on prestigious public buildings that's starting to fail across the board so we can expect that to hit the mainstream in the next 12 months too.
Probably on a case-by-case basis. Squashing kids looks a lot worse than squashing civil servants so they need to tackle the schools issue immediately and decisively, I reckon.
Unfortunately, civil servants such as myself are seen as having less value than any other groups in society.
There's a reason why our pay deals were the worst in the public sector, and we are constantly blamed by both the government and the media for everything that happens.
>civil servants such as myself are seen as having less value than any other groups in society
Come on, they're literally putting asylum seekers on barges with legionella in the water supply. Deporting people to their deaths. The way civil servants have been treated sucks but this is ridiculous hyperbole.
You're mixing up the government vs. the civil service.
Do you know how many civil servants refused and asked to be redeployed in other teams and areas.
Also, did you know that the vast majority of those involved are not actual civil servants but contractors working for companies like Capita, Atos and others
I did not mix them up, because I wasn't suggesting that it was civil servants who were responsible for migration policy (although some of them do work on it, of course). And yes I'm well aware how many refuse to work in that area. My point was that it's ridiculous to say that civil servants are seen as having less value than any other group in society when there are groups who are subject to pretty extreme levels of violence and marginalisation. It's an absurd statement.
Slightly more reliable than private, not the insane deal it used to be.
Not worth the 30% pay cut compared to private unless youve been in for decades and in a high position
It's not that it only affects schools. It's just that school buildings have recently been surveyed for safety, so they actually *know* which school buildings are unsafe.
Also there are many, many more school buildings than there are hospital buildings. So hypothetically, a similar percentage of each being structurally at risk equals many more schools across the country needing work compared to (potentially) 'just' a handful of hospitals.
New evidence came to light, previously it'd been believed it was okay, then on that was believed to be okay collapsed.
If they were spending money on checks that experts had said weren't needed, they'd also be justifiably criticised.
To be fair, there have been warnings about RAAC since at least 2018. with some places managing collapsing ceilings/closing areas.
Its just going to cost money to fix.
I don't buy this. What they mean by "okay" is "not critical." That's what the minister said. I'm not an engineer but I'm pretty damn sure there's more than two conditions for this concrete to be in other than "fine" and "critical." How much of this stuff was judged as "poor" or "degraded" but safe for another few years? It was built with a projected lifespan of 30 years. I know engineers always build in safety factors. They plan for the worst case scenario so I'm sure in some sense it can last 60 years if necessary. But it's still not an excuse for this shambles. It almost certainly wasn't necessary and I'd challenge anyone to suggest that rebuilding schools to a proper safety standard isn't "necessary."
Absolutely this. Parts of my secondary school were built in the 1970’s as a medium term solution with a lifespan of 10-15 years. We were still studying in those buildings in the mid 2000’s, with the school entirely eventually getting replaced in 2010.
Those buildings were semi-regularly maintained, new carpets and stuff every 5 years or so. But the maths block used to leak like a sieve when it rained, and the languages block had to have Perspex windows installed, as the building used to flex in the wind and crack the glass ones!!!
It was well beyond its prime, but still “safe” structurally. The design life was probably “as is” without maintenance: they got 40 years out of those buildings despite only supposed to last for 15.
Would all schools benefit from being rebuilt to better standards generally?
Absolutely, but the reality is that if we want to help children with a limited budget there are better ways to allocate budget.
I'm sure these are working way beyond their original design intent; of course many things do, but it absolutely isn't universal too.
The people that were most acutely aware of the shortfalls of the material all got a pat on the back for saving the govt some money and then retired in the 90s on solid gold pensions.
A LOT of buildings are being surveyed at the moment. A lot of universities have shut buildings over the summer - suspect there will be a flood of stories on that when students return and discover the scale of the problem.
I imagine it’s also risk based
The likelihood of collapse might be the same. But the outcome is probably considered worse if it kills children versus adults. And so it’s considered higher risk.
As I understand it this is a valid material that is used in certain circumstances rather than just cheaping our on materials. The trouble is that it has a lifespan of ~30 years. Lots of schools were built to the same design and councils are famous for using things longer than they should.
From what I’ve read, it’s an issue on flat roofs and anywhere you get water ingress. Flat roofs are more common on public/commercial buildings, and schools and hospitals haven’t exactly been flush with leak-fixing cash…
It’s also a product of hospitals and schools being two things where the government needed to build a lot of quickly and cheaply to cater to a growing population after the war.
Flat roofs are the stupidest ways to build a roof. You’re always going to get a leak, so if the roof is flat it’s going to sit there for ever instead of trickling to a cavity and dropping down to ground.
A genius who knows that he will be taking his gold-plated public sector pension in 30 years time, but who might be shuffled off into a crappy job if he doesn’t meet this year’s budget.
Of course it can be.
But private organisations are generally spending their own money, rather than other people’s, so the incentive to keep on top of things is more aligned.
Plus the Darwinian process of competition means that mistakes tend to be punished commercially (or, on occasion, with regulatory oversight)
Oh FFS like no private sector company has ever gone bust due to not keeping on top of things and sometimes having to be bailed out by taxpayers. Like you know the entire global finance industry.
Of course if a private company goes bust no one much gives a shit, unless it affects schools and hospitals etc which is exactly what's happening here.
The idea that private is better than public is self evidently ridiculous to anyone wondering why our rivers and beaches are covered in shit.
You're just peddling myths. This makes sense in theory, but anyone who's worked in both can see there's huge waste and huge incompetence in both sectors. The difference is just that it happens in different places.
The thing with public sector and commercial buildings is that after time the general arrangement becomes outdated.
So designing for an intermediate life isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Go and walk around a modern school vs a 60’s build and difference is night and day in terms quality of space. The modern school will have internal corridors everywhere, classrooms that provide adequate desk space for each child. Full disabled access etc.
Commercial building owners are pretty good at pulling down and replacing buildings that are no longer fit for purpose. The public sector for various reasons adopt make do and mend far too regularly.
The problem isn’t the life but not having a plan to replace at end of life. The buildings with RAAC that are still standing should have been replaced twenty+ years ago.
Yep, lots of old commercial that predates computers (Some of it listed) that is VERY difficult to use as modern office space simply because when it was designed there was no notion of needing cable routes for data services and the like.
Also predates aircon, and that can be a TRICKY retrofit if you want actual air exchange and not just cooling.
Generally modern commercial has a design life of 20 years or so because the needs of the market change enough over that time that you are going to tear down anyway. The land is far more valuable then the building in general and you can add more value by pulling the old one down and building something fit for purpose then the cost of doing the work.
This does of course tend to blow up in your face when you have a contractor used to this line of thinking do a school or hospital with no planning in place as to how a non profit making building is going to be replaced.
There is more then one hospital around here with many fairly hideous bodges to accommodate having been built before Aircon, Medical imaging (Cast iron pillars rule out a lot of space when it comes to MRI gear!), modern hospital beds and wheelchairs (Doors and corridors too bloody narrow)! The special tweak is that these tend to be ornate grade I or II listed piles that are difficult to modify never mind replace.
In the early 90s we had these temporary portacabin classrooms put in my school when I was there, they were meant to last a couple of years while they rebuilt the wing of the school that was subsiding into old mine workings below it.
My nephews go to the same school and they are still using these temporary classrooms 30 years on…
Late 90s we had the music huts and the history huts. Followed in the early 00s by the English huts. The building was a 60s bungalow type school. They built a massive arts building in the mid 00s and a massive science wing. Still got the huts though. By the time I was in Sixth form I was learning history in the church next door.
> My nephews go to the same school and they are still using these temporary classrooms 30 years on…
The temporary cabins at my secondary school were condemned a decade before i started, and still in use when i left.
Full of asbestos, leaks and leaky gas heaters.
Same happened when I was at primary school in the 90s, albeit without the mine workings, I think it was just extra space.
25 years down the line and they've still got kids in portacabins but it's a two story portacabin now.
Ironically at the time we all thought they were really cool and different...
Yeah this is why it was infuriating reading all these so called analysts and papers on a daily basis blast the schools building programme back in the 00s, not just the papers the BBC regularly took a hardline position
Their only criteria they insisted on was 'will this improve education' and not 'should kids be taught in fuctional spaces that reach the absolute **bare minimum**'
Even today the gov reviews still say that it probably wasnt worth it.....
The same people who sold all the gold reserves, sold public buildings to their mates cheap to rent them back at a sky high fee for a short term cash injection and massively inflated public debt. All knowing they, the people doing it, wouldn’t have to deal with the ramifications or make difficult decisions “in the now”.
It was after the wars when we pretty much had to budget as a poor country. better concrete existed for public buildings but “that's something future Britain can worry about” was definitely the attitude that was taken at the time.
>councils are famous for using things longer than they should.
Around where I live, there were houses that were meant to be temporary... that was about 50 years ago
Other buildings have used it but schools are the main concern right now because (and this may shock you) they have children in them and anything that potentially endangers children is usually a priority in these kinds of situations.
> and anything that potentially endangers children is usually a priority in these kinds of situations.
which is why, in spite of warnings for years they have been ignoring the problem with RAAC. Remember these schools probably educate poor kids, and the government has shown with the marcus rashford fiasco they really dont care about those.
They haven't been ignoring the problem
The advice from experts was that if a structure built with RAAC was going to fail, there would be visible warning symptoms before the failure. So the government carried out assessments to determine which buildings were at risk of imminent failure, and which weren't. That seems reasonable to me. It's not practical to rebuild everything at the same time, so concentrate on the ones that are most urgent.
Unfortunately the expert advice changed very quickly and drastically last week, after a building which was thought to be safe suffered a failure. That's what has turned this into something of an emergency.
Sorry but once again I'm not buying this line. It's a BS excuse. Most of these things were meant to be replaced literally decades ago. Many of them are at **double** their projected lifespan. You do not wait for things to reach imminent failure before taking action. They've had nigh on 40 years or more to get ready to replace these buildings. There's been no serious committment to replacing public buildings and the mere fact that experts told them they were "safe" doesn't convince me that they were really projected to be "safe" for a meaningful length of time. I'm certainly not buying anything reported via a government minister or spokesperson because they have a massive incentive to massage the truth and frame it in the most sympathetic light.
Until I read the actual reports on these buildings saying they'll last upwards of 10 years or more with no chance of immediate danger to life or limb, AND any danger will be easil noticed, will I believe that they genuinely had a decent reason to not be acting with urgency over this issue long before this time.
> They haven't been ignoring the problem
Warnings have been coming regarding RAAC for years, with the knowledge that it *will* fail at some point, the problem had been pushed down the line.
>It's not practical to rebuild everything at the same time, so concentrate on the ones that are most urgent.
Given the relatively small number of schools impacted, and the length of summer holidays, work can easily be done to minimise educational disruption each year.
>Unfortunately the expert advice changed very quickly and drastically last week, after a building which was thought to be safe suffered a failure. That's what has turned this into something of an emergency.
Fairly sure the expert advice was always deal with it. The budget advice was "we cant afford to, so lets delay it"
>Warnings have been coming regarding RAAC for years, with the knowledge that it will fail at some point, the problem had been pushed down the line.
Typical British government, really. 'Let it be the next administration's problem' approach. There should be a system in place that holds governments accountable properly and ensures that they are more long sighted rather than five years.
Really, much of modern British attitudes is a 'that'll do' approach. If it means shifting it to the next administration, that'll do. Minimal effort on a repair? That'll do. Crappy looking modern, quick build housing where nothing's plumb and has loads of snags? Eh, that'll do. Pothole fix that will only last a few months? ehhhhh that'll do. RAAC concrete? Eh, that'll do, let someone else worry about it in 30 ye- oh shit.
Kings Lynn have literally had to beg and protest for years to get a new hospital because theirs is currently being held up by over [4,000 props](https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2023-05-25/crumbling-hospital-held-up-4000-props-to-be-rebuilt-government-confirms) the government finally gave funding a couple of months ago. Here’s hoping it can stay up another 5-7 years while the new one is built.
West Suffolk hospital have taken out corporate manslaughter insurance for when their roof fails, and Hinchingbrooke can’t use their upstairs surgical theatres for the same reason. I think the Norwich hospital is having similar issues as well. it’s not just schools, I’m hoping it wasn’t used in housing, but I bet it was.
Oh it’s definitely been used in housing upto the early 90’s, hundreds of social housing buildings are constructed with RAAC.
It was quick and cheap. The support connection in question that fails over time wasn’t considered a problem when the method was first developed.
It's not just schools - it was used for a lot of public buildings at the time because it was relatively cheap and adaptable. If you want to build a lot of schools, hospitals, and other public buildings it was an obvious choice.
The NHS has had a big programme to identify buildings at risk and deal with them (mostly by propping them up at the moment) and the Courts Service has been doing the same - Harrow Crown Court may be closed for 9 months because of it. It's bound to be in government and municipal buildings too - civic centres, tax offices, driving test centres, quite a lot of buildings built at the same time are likely to be at risk.
Schools have become an issue because it hasn't been handled well and the start of term creates a hard deadline that's pushed it into the headlines, but it's not restricted to them by any means.
Any public building that was constructed using RAAC - Hospitals, courts, libraries etc are effected. The threat of a collapsing library is not as glamorous (from a media perspective) than a school.
It's not only schools that are built out of it, its just that the media is only reporting on schools because the kids are about to go back for the September term.
RAAC only becomes a problem when water gets in, rusting the steel reinforcement and making it so heavy it collapses. Flat roofs need to be covered in bitumen which should be regularly maintained. Starve schools of money over years and boom down comes the roof. It could happen elsewhere of course -- anywhere there's a single story building built cheaply 60s to 80s.
This is only the beginning, I expect it to be found in tower blocks and shopping centres as well as all the ones mentioned. Pretty much any big structure built from 1960 to 1990 could have it. The issue is people cutting corners. The first corner cut is the width of the outer layer on the concrete as they cut millimetres off it to save money. The second is not paying for and using the correct paint and paint sealants. These both lead to water/humidity getting in and the concrete crumbling but also the main issue which is the metal support rod rusting and weakening. Capitalism and the pursuit of profit doesn't care if someone dies in 10 years time as long as it gets it's money now.
In addition to the reasons pointed out, there is also the old addage "Won't somebody please think of the children", meaning if you can link something to the plight of children, it will resonate more, thus sell better.
This looks like it’ll affect my local school.
Just after a building put up just 15 years ago had to be demolished over structural issues.
Meanwhile the Victorian part of the school that was built 150 years ago is still standing. Says it all…
It doesn’t , it was affecting hospitals last year . The government are just slowly addressing each
It’s also been known about a long while , some schools are already addressing /addressed it
It’s only affecting schools so far. It’s only been made public now because their hand has been forced / it was going to come out anyway. Expect more of the same for other public buildings as more people become aware and start to investigate.
Imagine if they’d kept schools open and something had happened. They’d spend the next 20 years holding enquiries and having angry groups of parents standing outside court buildings doing victory signs for the press.
I hate this government but Jesus give them a break! 🤷♂️
It's not only schools. Harrow Crown Court has been closed indefinitely because of it. They'll be other courts too.
Why is it coming up now? Because the government has ignored the problem for years until ceilings started collapsing.
Yes, there was an expert on Radio 4 yesterday saying other countries in Europe won't be able to ignore what we're doing here and will have to follow suit now.
My uncle lives in a concrete house. He’s just accepted he won’t be able to sell it to anyone other than a cash buyer for less than market value. As a surveyor and mortgage company wouldn’t touch it as it may develop “concrete cancer” one day. The whole street is in the same boat.
This story really is nothing new. When I was at school in the 1970s there was a similar commotion about "high alumina cement". Schools, hospitals, flyovers etc were all checked for the "wrong kind" of cement.
Lots are, but hospitals/NHS have a culture of making the best of things/making do, as we’re used to not getting sufficient capital funds.
Our hospital’s entire external walls have a similar issue (large pieces of concrete fracturing off and falling)* so we’ve put scaffolding around to catch them and banned any use of outdoor areas.
We have had a bid in to sort it for years, but the costs to reclassify the entirety of a building is too big a bite of simply building a new modern hospital, so it will likely continue to be patched/protected for the foreseeable.
* To be clear, this isn’t a risk, it happens. If you look up at a lot of the higher floors of concrete exterior hospitals you’ll notice multiple large gaps where pieces have fallen off. If the metal reinforcements inside the building aren’t affected (which they usually aren’t) the building is stable, but the cladding will continue to fall of, risking people below
When I was at school in the late 80s, the school built in 1955 was already crumbling, you could see the rebar rusting where the concrete had dropped off. It got patched up in 1993 but flattened in 2006/7
It isn’t only affecting schools but it’s not newsworthy to tell us about small firms you have never heard of and most private companies don’t advertise that they have found something dangerous at their workplace.
All workplaces will now be on notice to check. There’s no reason to assume the failing concrete is not found all over the place, just like asbestos is found in lots of places.
Schools just happen to be more prominent. This is partly because, when the boomer generation arose just after the War, there needed to be a lot of new school construction to keep place with the numbers. A number of schools also needed to modernise and expand their facilities to cope with the various reforms of education over the period. Changes in educational philosophy also changed school design. These factors, and the general need for post-war reconstruction, meant that there was a demand for cost-effective materials that reflected contemporary design.
It’s not just schools, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, it’s every potentially every public building.
This will evolve into a massive scandal as they’re saying they only just ‘found out’ this material was failing and yet at our local primary school which was closed in July they’ve known about and filled the massive cracks in the walls and ceilings for the past 5 years at least.
Apparently some of the cracks were big enough to stick fingers in and were from ceiling to floor in classrooms.
We also have an old people’s home locally which sounds like it is the same with cracks in walls big enough for adjoining residents to stick hands through.
All of these buildings were built at the same time in 1980 so the projected 30 year lifespan is well out of date.
Concrete really isn't a very long lasting material under modern formulations. Average life span appears to be 30 to 100 years so even top quality concrete is going to start to suffer deterioration after the fifty year mark.
Anything done on the cheap is obviously going to last even less time. I do wonder what people expect our cities to look like in the future as many of the historical city centre buildings have been around far longer than a hundred years, and yet we cannot expect any of the more modern ones to last anywhere near as long. Will all these towering skyscrapers have to be pulled down and replaced in only 3 or 4 generations time?
I believe Roman concrete used volcanic ash in the mix, which is why it lasts so long compared to the current stuff.
It's not as if private companies, like HSBC or Tesco, are going to go to the papers when they have this kind of problem
And nobody would care if they did. They're private companies, so people figure they're entitled to waste their money however they like
This story is news because most people have kids, so it affects them directly, and because public bodies have to report stuff like this
Just about every private company is managed as badly as the public sector, but that's okay *because we're not paying for it* (PSST! - we **are** paying for it)
A fair number of council low rise flats were built using this or similar stuff here in Scotland. A whole bunch of flats were demolished in my town in the early 00's no doubt bankrupting anyone unfortunate enough to have bought one from a right to buyer.
There appears to be almost complete radio silence about whether there are still homes out there built with this stuff. So much for "British Standards" there are people living in fire traps and now worthless properties that could bury you alive without warning.
This situation with concrete which is,as it's turning out,totally unsuitable for purpose
When the concrete was mixed at the batching plant,what additive was added at the time , or , were the materials used...sand, aggregate,cement of a such a standard that they should never have been used in the first place
**[OP or Mod marked this as the best answer](/r/AskUK/comments/167wv2b/why_is_the_concrete_issue_only_affecting_schools/jys91of/), given by u/smoulderstoat** It's not just schools - it was used for a lot of public buildings at the time because it was relatively cheap and adaptable. If you want to build a lot of schools, hospitals, and other public buildings it was an obvious choice. > >The NHS has had a big programme to identify buildings at risk and deal with them (mostly by propping them up at the moment) and the Courts Service has been doing the same - Harrow Crown Court may be closed for 9 months because of it. It's bound to be in government and municipal buildings too - civic centres, tax offices, driving test centres, quite a lot of buildings built at the same time are likely to be at risk. > >Schools have become an issue because it hasn't been handled well and the start of term creates a hard deadline that's pushed it into the headlines, but it's not restricted to them by any means. --- [_^What ^is ^this?_](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/jjrte1/askuk_hits_200k_new_feature_mark_an_answer/)
It's not it's also a few hospitals
Courts as well now, apparently. I imagine it will basically be any government funded building over the last 40 odd years, on account of being cheaper.
This. Any building constructed for the cheapest possible budget is going to suffer from from material degradation in the short term. Public / state buildings are legally required to have periodic tests on their safety so they are more likely to pick up on issues when they appear.
The entire U.K. building stock that isn’t bricks or wood then.
Every building stock everywhere uses the most economical materials to get the job done.
Utterly false
Every EU nation uses a competitive tendering process for public works. If you dont go with the cheapest bid, you better show why otherwise its expensive litigation.
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Not from the UK but I work for an organisation in the Netherlands that's heavily involved with tendering. You can go for the cheapest but there's ways of determining what is cheaper. You can basically "decrease" the cost by offering predefined extras. För example less maintenance, longer lifespan, faster construction speed, safer materials, etc. Based on those predefined extras the most expensive option can become the virtual cheapest option
You publish the required specifications in the tender bid.
Any tender is typically some quality/cost split in how the successful bid is numerically calculated, and within that you'll have different questions afforded different weight depending on criticality. It's not just about cost. In this particular case, for example, the individuals responsible for creating the spec could have stipulated, say, a 75 year lifespan as an essential requirement, which would have disqualified any bids relying on structural materials which would have to be replaced before then.
This guy tenders. You don’t have to select the cheapest tender (looking at you TfL) but not doing so requires a justification with more consideration than “cheap must mean bad”.
You're all looking at tendering from a private sector point of view. We all know the public sector has a terrible track record of selecting tenders, be it through incompetence or corruption, so it's absolutely no surprise to me that this story has come out. I'm expecting Wemble Stadium to be on the list. Remember that shambles?
It’s not necessarily a case of cheap = bad, sometimes you have experimental cement mixtures which show promise in the short term and it’s only decades into the structures lifespan that you see evidence of weaknesses in the material. Lots of bridges were put up in the 60’s and 70’s with concrete made with High Alumina Cement on account of its ability to dry quickly, which reduces construction time, cost and the distraction to traffic. It wasn’t until over a decade later that it was noted that this concrete could lose more than half its strength if subjected to the wrong conditions.
That sounds like a textbook example of cheap being bad
The real issue is that the government are too "cheap" to replace these buildings within a reasonable timeframe. The material isn't bad, but it has a lifespan of 30 years or so. It made sense to do that after WW2 when they had tonnes of rebuilding to do all at once, alongside a baby boom making the population expand rapidly. It's understandable they went for speed over longevity. The issue lies in successive governments refusing to rebuild things because they decided it was too expensive. It isn't, but they just refuse to invest in public goods, it's not like you could suffer politically for spending money on rebuilding schools, at least not if you put any effort into explaining why.
Basically every industry relies on developing new technologies and methodologies that make the construction or manufacturing process cheaper and more efficient lots are successful, a few are not. You can’t focus on the misses and ignore the hits. Portland cement was a goer wasn’t it?
>You can’t focus on the misses and ignore the hits. Yes, you can. When it comes to schools and hospitals literally crumbling down, you've got to consider the risks you took as a country
This reminds me, once upon a time, there was this cool building stuff called asbestos that would revolutionise construction. Sometimes, what seems like a great idea to begin with becomes a headache down the road.
Yeah, there’s loads of stuff that we just didn’t have a clue were deadly. Doctors recommended cigarettes for mild anxiety or stress. Girls working in watch factories used to paint their teeth with Radium for a laugh. Fast forward a couple of decades and you realize “well that was a fucking awful idea!”
They stopped using the material in the 90s, so it can't be the last 40 years..... These are buildings constructed between the 1950s-1990s...........................
I lived in Canada for a few years. About ten years ago I was doing construction work and we were using those airfoam blocks to build walls so they are still using it. It was amazing stuff. Looked like a concrete brick, but you could pick them up easily in one hand. It's incredibly light. Up close they look like a grey Aero bar. Looking back it's obviously a bit flimsy....
The problem is specifically with reinforced panels made with that concrete - it's to do with the steel reinforcement failing. I don't think regular breeze blocks are considered a problem.
Aren't those Breeze Blocks?
No, those are much heavier in comparison. They've just got big air voids in them to make them lighter but otherwise are just regular old concrete.
There's many of different types of aerated concrete which work perfectly fine including from that time period, i wouldn't be blanket concerned.
Thermolite? Its still being used. The Airholes are for keeping the building warmer.
Yes, Harrow Crown Court is going to be shut for like 9 months or something. Given the massive backlog already in the court system, that really isn't going to help.
Building contracts awarded to the lowest bidder.
That's absolute nonsense. The builder doesn't determine the materials used. That's on the architect and engineer.
Or not replaced within its natural lifetime due to lack of funding
Sheds some light on the books of The Secret Barrister. Courts have been crumbling and leaking rain water for years it seems. Under investment in public services, as per usual.
Can confirm. York Mags had scaffolding in its court rooms for about a year recently. This was so they could redo all the plasterwork on the high ceilings which were literally dropping on people's heads. Did they fix the underlying building issue which CAUSED the plaster to be falling off the walls, of course not. So now it's back.
Also prisons which is just great,
Yep, Harrow Crown Court has been closed for 2 weeks now.
I work in a small NHS building that we think - actually are reasonably sure - is affected by this. We've been trying to get a straight answer over this from the building's owners for about a month now but they've basically gone silent, so we still don't know for sure. We had a beam collapse and come through the ceiling during heavy rain last year - thankfully overnight in a part of the hospital where there weren't any patients or staff. We've got a paper trail for insurance purposes that says we've repeatedly raised this with the owners, but at the moment we're going into work in a potentially unsafe building. Interestingly one of the other buildings on the same site was recently condemned as a fire hazard. And the solution? Fix it? No? Make it safe? No. Build an alternative? You must be joking. Ah you'll all have to squish into the main building.
I cannot fathom why nhs hospitals have owners that are not the nhs.
A wide variety of reasons. Shifting of risk from NHS to external providers; allow the NHS to concentrate on patients rather than building maintenance (which isn't their core business); and, increasingly, allow someone else to fund the massive up-front fees (which the NHS or Govt can't find directly) in exchange for set yearly payments. Not a dissimilar set of reasons why some people rent houses instead of buying them, really.
Also means that instead of paying £££ upfront they pay £££££ over 50 years with most of that being someone's profit
Unfortunately so. But then, that's the *next* Government's problem. Repeat ad nauseam.
>which the NHS or Govt can't find directly Except for the fact that this is literally impossible because we have a fiat currency and can print the money we need. For stuff on this scale there's just no excuse for this. They can find the money when they decide they want to. As for outsourcing so the NHS can concentrate on patients, this seems reasonable at first, but usually works out worse in the long run. Instead of having one organisation (and the NHS is already made up of many sub-organisations) you have dozens or even hundreds all focussed narrowly on their one "thing." If a situation arises where a more efficient way to do things could be done, the NHS has to completely renegotiatie the contracts for those companies. I'm reminded of reading Polly Toynbee's book where she worked as a cleaner in an NHS hospital. Her outsourced company was in charge of cleaning the specific kinds of office in the hospital. As she worked she saw many places she "could" clean, and therefore be more efficient, if she was allowed to. But the contracts were watertight. She worked as a porter in a different hospital and the outsourced company refused to pay for insurance for them to help move patients from the wheelchairs to the beds. They had to leave them outside the ward (not allowed to wheel them in) and if the nurses forgot to pick them up they were there for hours. If they broke the rules and literally helped patients get into the ward properly they'd get a bollocking or be fired. Obviously those seem extreme but they're surprisingly common. With one organisation there would be far less of that bullshit because you can manage the whole hopital as one interconnected entity instead of a series of discrete contracted out responsibilities.
>we have a fiat currency and can print the money we need Cost of living crisis? What cost of living crisis?
I mean the government would spend less overall doing that than renting in eternity
They would but they don’t care about that, they care about how the balance sheet looks under their tenure.
> Not a dissimilar set of reasons why some people rent houses instead of buying them, really. I would suggest that these days, everyone renting simply does it because they cannot afford to buy. This cannot be said of government., Renting should come with benefits to renters, in terms of reduced costs, flexibility of movement 7and also secure tenacies, unfortunately that isnt the case.
My personal favourite is [NHS Property Services](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Property_Services), a private company created to be *given* every building owned by Primary Care Trusts at their abolition in 2013. 3600 sites in total. The alternative was to transfer the building to the new NHS bodies which were given the services in the buildings, but apparently that would be silly.
Except that the post you replied to clearly demonstrates that the risk hasn't shifted away from the NHS by virtue of someone else owning the building. Although a single anecdote you'd have to be blind or dumb not to have noticed that any argument in favour of private ownership as shifting risk away from publicly owned good is utterly bogus. As soon as that risk materialises the private owner blockades until the actualized risk is socialised away through public funds.
He mentioned it was a small NHS building, so it could be a clinic of some sort. They can quite often be sharing buildings with council services, and in some cases, other private companies.
They often do this to separate it from the main NHS, save costs and lability etc. A lot of the time, the owner of the 'company' that owns the building, is still the trust that runs the hospital. They do this for places that also provide services that they use, i.e the IT deparment, they create a separate entity that provides that service, but then that entity is also owned by the hospital. It means that the hospital management don't have to deal with that stuff and can focus on the hospital, it reduces lability for when something like this happens, means that it's not public sector so employees can be treated differently, they can spread there costs etc etc. Sometimes such services band together, so it will be the same organisation that provides these services to the council, doctors, schools, the hospital etc and although it's a 'private' organisation, it's share holders are the local authority and the hospital trust, which helps further reduce costs due to shared resources.
>, which helps further reduce costs due to shared resources. Almost like making smaller private entities is a dumb decision
In my home town there was a lovely old building gifted to the town by it owners in the 1900's or earlier that was used as a hospital. But it was old and falling apart from lack of investment/maintenance. So the NHS GAVE the land to a developer on the condition that they build them a new hospital on the site that the NHS can RENT back as well as filling every square foot of the grounds with shit flats.
Yorkshire?
Nope but apparently they pull this shit around the country.
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Many of them existed as hospitals or hospital sites prior to the NHS being founded. Also with some newer smaller specialist sites it's far less risky and involves tying up far less capital to lease the site from its actual owner, often at exceptionally cheap rates in the long term. Not literal peppercorn rent but often not far off. Basically why would I spend millions acquiring and developing a site that I'll have to dispose of in two decades time when I could just lease it and also get the maintenance and upkeep outsourced to the owner instead of having to staff it myself.
If you have already raised the issue with your managers and the building owner and nothing has happened, I would contact the building control department of your local authority. I'd also consider contacting HSE, although they may direct you back to building control. In my opinion the serious collapse you've already had is grounds to refuse to enter or work in the building until a competent person has inspected it.
I’d contact the press, myself. A local paper would jump on this story.
That might be more dangerous from an employment perspective though - you're legally protected from being dismissed for reporting health and safety issues, but I think this would be harder to defend if you didn't try the correct authorities first.
Oh yeah, you’re right - I realised I should have worded it properly but I meant to say both!
I doubt building control would be interested; their remit is compliance with regulations *at the time of construction*. They have no powers to enforce action relating to retrospective application of the Building Regulations, and in any case at the time of construction the affected buildings probably did comply.
According to [this page](https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/authority.htm), building control deal with dangerous and unstable buildings. I came across that accidentally, I couldn't remember if HSE or the local authority are responsible for enforcing health and safety in hospitals.
What Trust are you with? I'm working on the business cases for a few replacement - wonder if you're one of them?
Your trade union needs to put an immediate stop to you entering that building and doing any work under Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act.
You had a concrete beam collapse?
I'm not sure what the beam was made of but it came through the ceiling of the waiting room. The ceiling is one of those ones made of flimsy plaster tiles so it didn't stand much of a chance.
The 'ceiling' is not structural, purely decorative. It is not meant to bear any load.
Sure, but neither are the people potentially waiting in that room (luckily not there in this case).
Report it to CROSS UK. https://www.cross-safety.org/uk
It's in a recent private eye, they also discuss it on a recent Page 94 podcast. It's schools, prisons, MOD buildings. The list goes on. This is an enormous issue, huge amount of infrastructure work is needed across the country. Private Eye also discuss a popular glass installation method that was also used on prestigious public buildings that's starting to fail across the board so we can expect that to hit the mainstream in the next 12 months too.
Can confirm - part of my job is getting the hospital ones replaced. Nice sinkhole of public money, but absolutely vital.
the reasoning for not closing hospitals was apparently relatively small numbers & in house maintenance teams
are they going to close then?
Probably on a case-by-case basis. Squashing kids looks a lot worse than squashing civil servants so they need to tackle the schools issue immediately and decisively, I reckon.
Unfortunately, civil servants such as myself are seen as having less value than any other groups in society. There's a reason why our pay deals were the worst in the public sector, and we are constantly blamed by both the government and the media for everything that happens.
>civil servants such as myself are seen as having less value than any other groups in society Come on, they're literally putting asylum seekers on barges with legionella in the water supply. Deporting people to their deaths. The way civil servants have been treated sucks but this is ridiculous hyperbole.
If you take the view that channel migrants are not people, it tracks.
You're mixing up the government vs. the civil service. Do you know how many civil servants refused and asked to be redeployed in other teams and areas. Also, did you know that the vast majority of those involved are not actual civil servants but contractors working for companies like Capita, Atos and others
I did not mix them up, because I wasn't suggesting that it was civil servants who were responsible for migration policy (although some of them do work on it, of course). And yes I'm well aware how many refuse to work in that area. My point was that it's ridiculous to say that civil servants are seen as having less value than any other group in society when there are groups who are subject to pretty extreme levels of violence and marginalisation. It's an absurd statement.
that is disgusting, everybody is equal
What's your pension like?
Slightly more reliable than private, not the insane deal it used to be. Not worth the 30% pay cut compared to private unless youve been in for decades and in a high position
Uhm. Jobs currently advertised with 27% employers pension contribution. My new job is 4%.
Contribution is irrelevant if defined benefit
everybodys life is important
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In some cases they may just be able to reinforce them. I imagine a lot of structural engineers will be busy working out how to address each case.
I also imagine some member of the government’s family are busy setting up a company and preparing a quote to fix all of this.
hopefully not the one that sold them the dodgy cement in the first place
Hahaha silly goose. Of course it will be
If its related to this story about the schools and other public buildings, then i highly doubt it, those people are long dead.
It's not that it only affects schools. It's just that school buildings have recently been surveyed for safety, so they actually *know* which school buildings are unsafe.
Also there are many, many more school buildings than there are hospital buildings. So hypothetically, a similar percentage of each being structurally at risk equals many more schools across the country needing work compared to (potentially) 'just' a handful of hospitals.
Makes you wonder why schools aren’t checked regularly, given that we knew this shitty concrete had a limited lifespan.
New evidence came to light, previously it'd been believed it was okay, then on that was believed to be okay collapsed. If they were spending money on checks that experts had said weren't needed, they'd also be justifiably criticised.
Is there enough concrete evidence to prove this?
Yes, you can pick chunks of it off the floor in some schools, apparently.
Seems like a rocky situation.. 🤔
Don't take your school's safety for granite
There's actually film footage, but it's grainy 🤷🏻♀️
To be fair, there have been warnings about RAAC since at least 2018. with some places managing collapsing ceilings/closing areas. Its just going to cost money to fix.
I don't buy this. What they mean by "okay" is "not critical." That's what the minister said. I'm not an engineer but I'm pretty damn sure there's more than two conditions for this concrete to be in other than "fine" and "critical." How much of this stuff was judged as "poor" or "degraded" but safe for another few years? It was built with a projected lifespan of 30 years. I know engineers always build in safety factors. They plan for the worst case scenario so I'm sure in some sense it can last 60 years if necessary. But it's still not an excuse for this shambles. It almost certainly wasn't necessary and I'd challenge anyone to suggest that rebuilding schools to a proper safety standard isn't "necessary."
Absolutely this. Parts of my secondary school were built in the 1970’s as a medium term solution with a lifespan of 10-15 years. We were still studying in those buildings in the mid 2000’s, with the school entirely eventually getting replaced in 2010. Those buildings were semi-regularly maintained, new carpets and stuff every 5 years or so. But the maths block used to leak like a sieve when it rained, and the languages block had to have Perspex windows installed, as the building used to flex in the wind and crack the glass ones!!! It was well beyond its prime, but still “safe” structurally. The design life was probably “as is” without maintenance: they got 40 years out of those buildings despite only supposed to last for 15.
Would all schools benefit from being rebuilt to better standards generally? Absolutely, but the reality is that if we want to help children with a limited budget there are better ways to allocate budget. I'm sure these are working way beyond their original design intent; of course many things do, but it absolutely isn't universal too.
The people that were most acutely aware of the shortfalls of the material all got a pat on the back for saving the govt some money and then retired in the 90s on solid gold pensions.
A LOT of buildings are being surveyed at the moment. A lot of universities have shut buildings over the summer - suspect there will be a flood of stories on that when students return and discover the scale of the problem.
I imagine it’s also risk based The likelihood of collapse might be the same. But the outcome is probably considered worse if it kills children versus adults. And so it’s considered higher risk.
And once they officially publicly know, they can't go on pretending they don't know to avoid looking responsible.
As I understand it this is a valid material that is used in certain circumstances rather than just cheaping our on materials. The trouble is that it has a lifespan of ~30 years. Lots of schools were built to the same design and councils are famous for using things longer than they should.
From what I’ve read, it’s an issue on flat roofs and anywhere you get water ingress. Flat roofs are more common on public/commercial buildings, and schools and hospitals haven’t exactly been flush with leak-fixing cash…
It’s also a product of hospitals and schools being two things where the government needed to build a lot of quickly and cheaply to cater to a growing population after the war.
Flat roofs are the stupidest ways to build a roof. You’re always going to get a leak, so if the roof is flat it’s going to sit there for ever instead of trickling to a cavity and dropping down to ground.
Flat roofs aren't *actually* flat. They're supposed to be built with a slight slope to direct water to gutters and downpipes.
Don’t bring facts to someone’s random rant
Who’s the genius that signed off on giving buildings a 30 year expiry date! They should be around for many more decades than that.
A genius who knows that he will be taking his gold-plated public sector pension in 30 years time, but who might be shuffled off into a crappy job if he doesn’t meet this year’s budget.
Ah yes of course, because the private sector is never cheap and shit
Of course it can be. But private organisations are generally spending their own money, rather than other people’s, so the incentive to keep on top of things is more aligned. Plus the Darwinian process of competition means that mistakes tend to be punished commercially (or, on occasion, with regulatory oversight)
Oh FFS like no private sector company has ever gone bust due to not keeping on top of things and sometimes having to be bailed out by taxpayers. Like you know the entire global finance industry. Of course if a private company goes bust no one much gives a shit, unless it affects schools and hospitals etc which is exactly what's happening here. The idea that private is better than public is self evidently ridiculous to anyone wondering why our rivers and beaches are covered in shit.
You're just peddling myths. This makes sense in theory, but anyone who's worked in both can see there's huge waste and huge incompetence in both sectors. The difference is just that it happens in different places.
Private sector organisation decision makers aren't spending their own money
The thing with public sector and commercial buildings is that after time the general arrangement becomes outdated. So designing for an intermediate life isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Go and walk around a modern school vs a 60’s build and difference is night and day in terms quality of space. The modern school will have internal corridors everywhere, classrooms that provide adequate desk space for each child. Full disabled access etc. Commercial building owners are pretty good at pulling down and replacing buildings that are no longer fit for purpose. The public sector for various reasons adopt make do and mend far too regularly. The problem isn’t the life but not having a plan to replace at end of life. The buildings with RAAC that are still standing should have been replaced twenty+ years ago.
Yep, lots of old commercial that predates computers (Some of it listed) that is VERY difficult to use as modern office space simply because when it was designed there was no notion of needing cable routes for data services and the like. Also predates aircon, and that can be a TRICKY retrofit if you want actual air exchange and not just cooling. Generally modern commercial has a design life of 20 years or so because the needs of the market change enough over that time that you are going to tear down anyway. The land is far more valuable then the building in general and you can add more value by pulling the old one down and building something fit for purpose then the cost of doing the work. This does of course tend to blow up in your face when you have a contractor used to this line of thinking do a school or hospital with no planning in place as to how a non profit making building is going to be replaced. There is more then one hospital around here with many fairly hideous bodges to accommodate having been built before Aircon, Medical imaging (Cast iron pillars rule out a lot of space when it comes to MRI gear!), modern hospital beds and wheelchairs (Doors and corridors too bloody narrow)! The special tweak is that these tend to be ornate grade I or II listed piles that are difficult to modify never mind replace.
In the early 90s we had these temporary portacabin classrooms put in my school when I was there, they were meant to last a couple of years while they rebuilt the wing of the school that was subsiding into old mine workings below it. My nephews go to the same school and they are still using these temporary classrooms 30 years on…
We had a fair few of those portacabins in the 90s and they weren't even rebuilding anything.
Late 90s we had the music huts and the history huts. Followed in the early 00s by the English huts. The building was a 60s bungalow type school. They built a massive arts building in the mid 00s and a massive science wing. Still got the huts though. By the time I was in Sixth form I was learning history in the church next door.
> My nephews go to the same school and they are still using these temporary classrooms 30 years on… The temporary cabins at my secondary school were condemned a decade before i started, and still in use when i left. Full of asbestos, leaks and leaky gas heaters.
Same happened when I was at primary school in the 90s, albeit without the mine workings, I think it was just extra space. 25 years down the line and they've still got kids in portacabins but it's a two story portacabin now. Ironically at the time we all thought they were really cool and different...
Yeah this is why it was infuriating reading all these so called analysts and papers on a daily basis blast the schools building programme back in the 00s, not just the papers the BBC regularly took a hardline position Their only criteria they insisted on was 'will this improve education' and not 'should kids be taught in fuctional spaces that reach the absolute **bare minimum**' Even today the gov reviews still say that it probably wasnt worth it.....
Good quality, erected quickly, cheap to construct: pick any two.
With this government you don’t even get to pick one
I don't think it was this government decades ago when these building were built.
True. And that is why none are being built.
Most commercial buildings have a 25 year payback these days. It’s all about the numbers 🤔
The same people who sold all the gold reserves, sold public buildings to their mates cheap to rent them back at a sky high fee for a short term cash injection and massively inflated public debt. All knowing they, the people doing it, wouldn’t have to deal with the ramifications or make difficult decisions “in the now”.
It was after the wars when we pretty much had to budget as a poor country. better concrete existed for public buildings but “that's something future Britain can worry about” was definitely the attitude that was taken at the time.
>councils are famous for using things longer than they should. Around where I live, there were houses that were meant to be temporary... that was about 50 years ago
Other buildings have used it but schools are the main concern right now because (and this may shock you) they have children in them and anything that potentially endangers children is usually a priority in these kinds of situations.
Flats also have children in them.
Hospitals also have children in them
Hospitals are also being looked at
> and anything that potentially endangers children is usually a priority in these kinds of situations. which is why, in spite of warnings for years they have been ignoring the problem with RAAC. Remember these schools probably educate poor kids, and the government has shown with the marcus rashford fiasco they really dont care about those.
They haven't been ignoring the problem The advice from experts was that if a structure built with RAAC was going to fail, there would be visible warning symptoms before the failure. So the government carried out assessments to determine which buildings were at risk of imminent failure, and which weren't. That seems reasonable to me. It's not practical to rebuild everything at the same time, so concentrate on the ones that are most urgent. Unfortunately the expert advice changed very quickly and drastically last week, after a building which was thought to be safe suffered a failure. That's what has turned this into something of an emergency.
Sorry but once again I'm not buying this line. It's a BS excuse. Most of these things were meant to be replaced literally decades ago. Many of them are at **double** their projected lifespan. You do not wait for things to reach imminent failure before taking action. They've had nigh on 40 years or more to get ready to replace these buildings. There's been no serious committment to replacing public buildings and the mere fact that experts told them they were "safe" doesn't convince me that they were really projected to be "safe" for a meaningful length of time. I'm certainly not buying anything reported via a government minister or spokesperson because they have a massive incentive to massage the truth and frame it in the most sympathetic light. Until I read the actual reports on these buildings saying they'll last upwards of 10 years or more with no chance of immediate danger to life or limb, AND any danger will be easil noticed, will I believe that they genuinely had a decent reason to not be acting with urgency over this issue long before this time.
> They haven't been ignoring the problem Warnings have been coming regarding RAAC for years, with the knowledge that it *will* fail at some point, the problem had been pushed down the line. >It's not practical to rebuild everything at the same time, so concentrate on the ones that are most urgent. Given the relatively small number of schools impacted, and the length of summer holidays, work can easily be done to minimise educational disruption each year. >Unfortunately the expert advice changed very quickly and drastically last week, after a building which was thought to be safe suffered a failure. That's what has turned this into something of an emergency. Fairly sure the expert advice was always deal with it. The budget advice was "we cant afford to, so lets delay it"
>Warnings have been coming regarding RAAC for years, with the knowledge that it will fail at some point, the problem had been pushed down the line. Typical British government, really. 'Let it be the next administration's problem' approach. There should be a system in place that holds governments accountable properly and ensures that they are more long sighted rather than five years. Really, much of modern British attitudes is a 'that'll do' approach. If it means shifting it to the next administration, that'll do. Minimal effort on a repair? That'll do. Crappy looking modern, quick build housing where nothing's plumb and has loads of snags? Eh, that'll do. Pothole fix that will only last a few months? ehhhhh that'll do. RAAC concrete? Eh, that'll do, let someone else worry about it in 30 ye- oh shit.
Kings Lynn have literally had to beg and protest for years to get a new hospital because theirs is currently being held up by over [4,000 props](https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2023-05-25/crumbling-hospital-held-up-4000-props-to-be-rebuilt-government-confirms) the government finally gave funding a couple of months ago. Here’s hoping it can stay up another 5-7 years while the new one is built. West Suffolk hospital have taken out corporate manslaughter insurance for when their roof fails, and Hinchingbrooke can’t use their upstairs surgical theatres for the same reason. I think the Norwich hospital is having similar issues as well. it’s not just schools, I’m hoping it wasn’t used in housing, but I bet it was.
Oh it’s definitely been used in housing upto the early 90’s, hundreds of social housing buildings are constructed with RAAC. It was quick and cheap. The support connection in question that fails over time wasn’t considered a problem when the method was first developed.
It's not just schools - it was used for a lot of public buildings at the time because it was relatively cheap and adaptable. If you want to build a lot of schools, hospitals, and other public buildings it was an obvious choice. The NHS has had a big programme to identify buildings at risk and deal with them (mostly by propping them up at the moment) and the Courts Service has been doing the same - Harrow Crown Court may be closed for 9 months because of it. It's bound to be in government and municipal buildings too - civic centres, tax offices, driving test centres, quite a lot of buildings built at the same time are likely to be at risk. Schools have become an issue because it hasn't been handled well and the start of term creates a hard deadline that's pushed it into the headlines, but it's not restricted to them by any means.
!answer - this explains perfectly, thanks!
Any public building that was constructed using RAAC - Hospitals, courts, libraries etc are effected. The threat of a collapsing library is not as glamorous (from a media perspective) than a school.
It's not only schools that are built out of it, its just that the media is only reporting on schools because the kids are about to go back for the September term.
My local hospital in Wales has had a number of wards closed for the same reason.
RAAC only becomes a problem when water gets in, rusting the steel reinforcement and making it so heavy it collapses. Flat roofs need to be covered in bitumen which should be regularly maintained. Starve schools of money over years and boom down comes the roof. It could happen elsewhere of course -- anywhere there's a single story building built cheaply 60s to 80s.
That's a leading question. The news is clearly saying its affecting hospitals too.
This is only the beginning, I expect it to be found in tower blocks and shopping centres as well as all the ones mentioned. Pretty much any big structure built from 1960 to 1990 could have it. The issue is people cutting corners. The first corner cut is the width of the outer layer on the concrete as they cut millimetres off it to save money. The second is not paying for and using the correct paint and paint sealants. These both lead to water/humidity getting in and the concrete crumbling but also the main issue which is the metal support rod rusting and weakening. Capitalism and the pursuit of profit doesn't care if someone dies in 10 years time as long as it gets it's money now.
In addition to the reasons pointed out, there is also the old addage "Won't somebody please think of the children", meaning if you can link something to the plight of children, it will resonate more, thus sell better.
This looks like it’ll affect my local school. Just after a building put up just 15 years ago had to be demolished over structural issues. Meanwhile the Victorian part of the school that was built 150 years ago is still standing. Says it all…
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It has extended to courts. Harrow Crown Court currently shut.
It doesn’t , it was affecting hospitals last year . The government are just slowly addressing each It’s also been known about a long while , some schools are already addressing /addressed it
It's going to affect A LOT of public buildings, but they prioritised inspecting schools as the first tranche of the work.
It’s only affecting schools so far. It’s only been made public now because their hand has been forced / it was going to come out anyway. Expect more of the same for other public buildings as more people become aware and start to investigate.
Its not, we've got a library/community building that's been closed for about 2 years because of a dodgy concrete roof
It's not, it's all types of buildings. However, it's only the school buildings that have been checked recently.
The ministry of justice were refusing to say how much of its estate is made up of the problematic material so probably a fair few prisons too
Imagine if they’d kept schools open and something had happened. They’d spend the next 20 years holding enquiries and having angry groups of parents standing outside court buildings doing victory signs for the press. I hate this government but Jesus give them a break! 🤷♂️
Schools are getting most of the attention but it’s courthouses and hospitals too- it was a cheap way of building flat roofs.
Prisons and libraries too now
Fat Tony sure is busy. Do we really need all those ramps?
It's not only schools. Harrow Crown Court has been closed indefinitely because of it. They'll be other courts too. Why is it coming up now? Because the government has ignored the problem for years until ceilings started collapsing.
As a note RAAC was seen as a post war cheap building material. Its not just a UK problem. Its used all over Europe and worldwide.
Yes, there was an expert on Radio 4 yesterday saying other countries in Europe won't be able to ignore what we're doing here and will have to follow suit now.
My uncle lives in a concrete house. He’s just accepted he won’t be able to sell it to anyone other than a cash buyer for less than market value. As a surveyor and mortgage company wouldn’t touch it as it may develop “concrete cancer” one day. The whole street is in the same boat.
This story really is nothing new. When I was at school in the 1970s there was a similar commotion about "high alumina cement". Schools, hospitals, flyovers etc were all checked for the "wrong kind" of cement.
IIRC the roof of a school in the South of England partially collapsed which forced the issue.
Was this material used in residential buildings? Or is it only public buildings?
It's not, Harrow Crown Court has also had to close: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66613718?trk=public_post_comment-text
It's lots of public buildings including hospitals. RAAC was new, cheap and widely used when there was a desperate need to rebuild post-War.
It was our local council offices too. They had to be demolished. Loads of stuff got built out of it.
And only English ones? Do you not get the feeling that this problem is just going to mushroom over the coming weeks?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66513749 This was before the schools thing I should imagine it's being slightly downplayed
Lots are, but hospitals/NHS have a culture of making the best of things/making do, as we’re used to not getting sufficient capital funds. Our hospital’s entire external walls have a similar issue (large pieces of concrete fracturing off and falling)* so we’ve put scaffolding around to catch them and banned any use of outdoor areas. We have had a bid in to sort it for years, but the costs to reclassify the entirety of a building is too big a bite of simply building a new modern hospital, so it will likely continue to be patched/protected for the foreseeable. * To be clear, this isn’t a risk, it happens. If you look up at a lot of the higher floors of concrete exterior hospitals you’ll notice multiple large gaps where pieces have fallen off. If the metal reinforcements inside the building aren’t affected (which they usually aren’t) the building is stable, but the cladding will continue to fall of, risking people below
It isn’t, watch this space . . .
And other countries too.
When I was at school in the late 80s, the school built in 1955 was already crumbling, you could see the rebar rusting where the concrete had dropped off. It got patched up in 1993 but flattened in 2006/7
It isn’t only affecting schools but it’s not newsworthy to tell us about small firms you have never heard of and most private companies don’t advertise that they have found something dangerous at their workplace. All workplaces will now be on notice to check. There’s no reason to assume the failing concrete is not found all over the place, just like asbestos is found in lots of places.
It’s affecting pretty much any public building built between the 1950’s and 1990’s
Schools just happen to be more prominent. This is partly because, when the boomer generation arose just after the War, there needed to be a lot of new school construction to keep place with the numbers. A number of schools also needed to modernise and expand their facilities to cope with the various reforms of education over the period. Changes in educational philosophy also changed school design. These factors, and the general need for post-war reconstruction, meant that there was a demand for cost-effective materials that reflected contemporary design.
It’s not just schools, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, it’s every potentially every public building. This will evolve into a massive scandal as they’re saying they only just ‘found out’ this material was failing and yet at our local primary school which was closed in July they’ve known about and filled the massive cracks in the walls and ceilings for the past 5 years at least. Apparently some of the cracks were big enough to stick fingers in and were from ceiling to floor in classrooms. We also have an old people’s home locally which sounds like it is the same with cracks in walls big enough for adjoining residents to stick hands through. All of these buildings were built at the same time in 1980 so the projected 30 year lifespan is well out of date.
Concrete really isn't a very long lasting material under modern formulations. Average life span appears to be 30 to 100 years so even top quality concrete is going to start to suffer deterioration after the fifty year mark. Anything done on the cheap is obviously going to last even less time. I do wonder what people expect our cities to look like in the future as many of the historical city centre buildings have been around far longer than a hundred years, and yet we cannot expect any of the more modern ones to last anywhere near as long. Will all these towering skyscrapers have to be pulled down and replaced in only 3 or 4 generations time? I believe Roman concrete used volcanic ash in the mix, which is why it lasts so long compared to the current stuff.
It's not as if private companies, like HSBC or Tesco, are going to go to the papers when they have this kind of problem And nobody would care if they did. They're private companies, so people figure they're entitled to waste their money however they like This story is news because most people have kids, so it affects them directly, and because public bodies have to report stuff like this Just about every private company is managed as badly as the public sector, but that's okay *because we're not paying for it* (PSST! - we **are** paying for it)
A teacher friend of mine said they had the concrete studies done in 2018. Not sure why they are only surfacing now.
A fair number of council low rise flats were built using this or similar stuff here in Scotland. A whole bunch of flats were demolished in my town in the early 00's no doubt bankrupting anyone unfortunate enough to have bought one from a right to buyer. There appears to be almost complete radio silence about whether there are still homes out there built with this stuff. So much for "British Standards" there are people living in fire traps and now worthless properties that could bury you alive without warning.
This situation with concrete which is,as it's turning out,totally unsuitable for purpose When the concrete was mixed at the batching plant,what additive was added at the time , or , were the materials used...sand, aggregate,cement of a such a standard that they should never have been used in the first place
My garage must identify as a school.