Asbestos could be exposed in schools affected by crumbling concrete, experts have warned, meaning that many could shut for months.
There are fears that such is the scale of the problem that some schools may even have to be demolished.
More than 150 schools were told last week — days before they were due to reopen — that they would have to close buildings containing unstable reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
Engineers have warned with increasing urgency that RAAC, which was used by builders between the 1950s and 1980s and is often described as “Aero bar” concrete, can become unstable when it exceeds its 30-year lifespan.
Experts warn that the presence of RAAC also increases the danger of exposure to asbestos, which kills 5,000 people a year in the UK. Asbestos is safe while stable but if it is disturbed — for example, if a classroom roof made from crumbling concrete suddenly collapses — it could release fibres which can cause mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. Even removing or assessing RAAC panels could disturb asbestos, engineers said.
The Sunday Times is campaigning for the government to introduce a proactive phased removal of asbestos.
It is present in at least 80 per cent of schools nationwide. Crucially, RAAC and asbestos often exist in the same buildings, as both were used widely in the postwar building boom, making it inevitable that many of the head teachers forced to deal with the crumbling concrete this week will also have to tackle asbestos.
Even assessing the state of concrete in schools will be complicated, according to Matt Byatt, president of the Institution of Structural Engineers. “If there’s a risk that it is going to be disturbed, [asbestos] has to be removed by a specialist registered company prior to the main construction work starting. So it does add complication, it adds cost, it adds time.”
John Wallace, managing director of Ridgemont, a specialist construction and real estate law firm in London, said: “Those responsible for such buildings and those engaged to undertake the work carry a heavy burden. Serious consequences follow for those that do not meet their obligations under the relevant legislation.”
Asbestos, which is the name for naturally occuring mineral fibres, is strong, does not dissolve in water and is heat-resistant so was used in building materials, particularly for insulation. However, it was banned in the UK in 1985 after the health risks were exposed.
Asked about RAAC and abestos, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said on Sunday: “In terms of the information that we have in front of us to date we have acted immediately. We will continue to act, we will continue to invest. And I think it’s very important to reassure parents that where there is an issue as soon as we find out about it we will act.”
School fears demolition
Caroline Evans, head teacher at Parks Primary in Leicester, said that both RAAC and asbestos were discovered at her school. She has been forced to move her 485 pupils to an office block and a children’s centre. Plans have been drawn up for the construction of two-storey portable cabins on the school’s playing fields, with completion due before Christmas.
The old school building may have to be demolished, she said. “They have to take off the whole roof and they are looking at replacing it but if I was a betting lady I think they will knock down the whole school. It is not just RAAC, there is subsidence too.”
Another school leader, who works for an academy trust in the east of England with three schools affected by RAAC, said that children would be taught in a “rotation system” of shifts, with some in classrooms while others are kept at home for online lessons. Asbestos is also a problem, they said, with £1 million already spent on stripping out the material across the trust. Engineers are now poring over the asbestos surveys again to check whether it is also present in the roofs where RAAC has been identified.
‘Aero bar’ concrete
RAAC is typically used in planks and panels on flat roofs. Because it is filled with bubbles of air it is very lightweight — so light that it floats on water — with a density about a quarter that of standard concrete.
If left over time, the air bubbles can soak up moisture, particularly if the roof leaks or is badly maintained. The planks become prone to sagging and suddenly collapse. “It takes quite a long time for that process to get going,” said Adrian Tagg, associate professor of building surveying at the University of Reading. “But it reaches a critical point and all of a sudden it starts to fail.”
In December the Department for Education published guidance warning school manufacturers to “take particular care” when inspecting roofs made of RAAC owing to the possible presence of “asbestos-containing materials” in ceiling voids. It said that in some situations aerated concrete planks may even have been coated in Artex, a material that contains asbestos.
‘Covid was easy compared with this’
All public buildings are required to maintain asbestos registers, identifying the location of any use of the material. But a report by the Health and Safety Executive in July revealed that a third of the schools it inspected in the course of a year had been warned of “non-compliance” in their legal duty to manage asbestos effectively. It said that often inspectors had found that there was no up-to-date survey clearly showing the location of any asbestos, or that schools were not regularly monitoring the condition of parts of the buildings containing it.
Even if asbestos is not present, replacing panels affected by RAAC is extremely difficult, said Tagg. “You’re talking about effectively removing a roof. So you have to ask yourself the cost benefit of replacing a roof of a building that is 40 or 50 years old. Are you after another 20 years of life, or is it better to replace the building as a whole with something that has a 50-year life? It comes down to money — and budgets aren’t there to do that kind of work.”
Furious politicians and teachers asked why the decision to close schools was taken so late. Evans said: “This is the most challenging thing I have ever tackled. Covid was easy compared with this. The situation was apparent two years ago — where was the urgency in tackling it?”
Priti Patel, the former home secretary and MP for Witham in Essex, where five schools have been affected, said: “Ministers need to explain why the decision to close schools was not taken sooner so that working parents could plan . . . The government will have to account for its actions.”
History of threats
Scientists identified RAAC as a safety issue in the 1990s but the full danger became apparent in 2018 when a roof collapsed at Singlewell Primary in Gravesend, Kent — fortunately on a Saturday. The National Audit Office estimated that 24,000 school buildings — 38 per cent — had exceeded their initial life span.
A government survey of schools was carried out over the past year to identify the presence of RAAC. At the start of summer, with 6,300 schools questioned, 572 with suspected RAAC were identified, with 8,600 yet to respond. More detailed investigations then found that 156 schools had confirmed RAAC, with about 60 of these at critical risk.
Over the summer, three incidents occurred which made officials reconsider their risk assessment. According to a Whitehall source, the first red flag was raised when a sudden collapse occurred at a commercial property in Wales. A few weeks later an RAAC beam slipped at an educational institution in Scotland in a setting that would not have been considered critical. Then, just a week ago, a ceiling fell in a school in England.
Although nobody was hurt in any of these incidents, officials realised that schools that had previously been identified as “non-critical” were at risk of sudden collapse.
Tagg says that the issue spreads far more widely than schools. The NHS has known for years that it has RAAC in its hospitals, and has identified risk areas and started taking remedial measures. But other public sector buildings such as courts and police stations are also likely to contain the substance. “Any flat-roofed public sector building built in about 30 years from the 1950s could potentially include it,” he said.
Reminder: Michael Gove scrapped the Building Schools for the Future plan in 2010 which directly would have stopped this.
The asbestos is now structural since the concrete is doing fuck all
Only crocidolite and amosite were banned in 1985, Chrysotile wasn’t banned until 1999.
Genuine question – what happens when a school closes with these issues? Where do the teachers and pupils go? 👀
Hundreds of schools across the country were built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete between the 1960s and 1990s, with the buildings having a life span of around 30 years.
6 comments
Asbestos could be exposed in schools affected by crumbling concrete, experts have warned, meaning that many could shut for months.
There are fears that such is the scale of the problem that some schools may even have to be demolished.
More than 150 schools were told last week — days before they were due to reopen — that they would have to close buildings containing unstable reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
Engineers have warned with increasing urgency that RAAC, which was used by builders between the 1950s and 1980s and is often described as “Aero bar” concrete, can become unstable when it exceeds its 30-year lifespan.
Experts warn that the presence of RAAC also increases the danger of exposure to asbestos, which kills 5,000 people a year in the UK. Asbestos is safe while stable but if it is disturbed — for example, if a classroom roof made from crumbling concrete suddenly collapses — it could release fibres which can cause mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. Even removing or assessing RAAC panels could disturb asbestos, engineers said.
The Sunday Times is campaigning for the government to introduce a proactive phased removal of asbestos.
It is present in at least 80 per cent of schools nationwide. Crucially, RAAC and asbestos often exist in the same buildings, as both were used widely in the postwar building boom, making it inevitable that many of the head teachers forced to deal with the crumbling concrete this week will also have to tackle asbestos.
Even assessing the state of concrete in schools will be complicated, according to Matt Byatt, president of the Institution of Structural Engineers. “If there’s a risk that it is going to be disturbed, [asbestos] has to be removed by a specialist registered company prior to the main construction work starting. So it does add complication, it adds cost, it adds time.”
John Wallace, managing director of Ridgemont, a specialist construction and real estate law firm in London, said: “Those responsible for such buildings and those engaged to undertake the work carry a heavy burden. Serious consequences follow for those that do not meet their obligations under the relevant legislation.”
Asbestos, which is the name for naturally occuring mineral fibres, is strong, does not dissolve in water and is heat-resistant so was used in building materials, particularly for insulation. However, it was banned in the UK in 1985 after the health risks were exposed.
Asked about RAAC and abestos, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said on Sunday: “In terms of the information that we have in front of us to date we have acted immediately. We will continue to act, we will continue to invest. And I think it’s very important to reassure parents that where there is an issue as soon as we find out about it we will act.”
School fears demolition
Caroline Evans, head teacher at Parks Primary in Leicester, said that both RAAC and asbestos were discovered at her school. She has been forced to move her 485 pupils to an office block and a children’s centre. Plans have been drawn up for the construction of two-storey portable cabins on the school’s playing fields, with completion due before Christmas.
The old school building may have to be demolished, she said. “They have to take off the whole roof and they are looking at replacing it but if I was a betting lady I think they will knock down the whole school. It is not just RAAC, there is subsidence too.”
Another school leader, who works for an academy trust in the east of England with three schools affected by RAAC, said that children would be taught in a “rotation system” of shifts, with some in classrooms while others are kept at home for online lessons. Asbestos is also a problem, they said, with £1 million already spent on stripping out the material across the trust. Engineers are now poring over the asbestos surveys again to check whether it is also present in the roofs where RAAC has been identified.
‘Aero bar’ concrete
RAAC is typically used in planks and panels on flat roofs. Because it is filled with bubbles of air it is very lightweight — so light that it floats on water — with a density about a quarter that of standard concrete.
If left over time, the air bubbles can soak up moisture, particularly if the roof leaks or is badly maintained. The planks become prone to sagging and suddenly collapse. “It takes quite a long time for that process to get going,” said Adrian Tagg, associate professor of building surveying at the University of Reading. “But it reaches a critical point and all of a sudden it starts to fail.”
In December the Department for Education published guidance warning school manufacturers to “take particular care” when inspecting roofs made of RAAC owing to the possible presence of “asbestos-containing materials” in ceiling voids. It said that in some situations aerated concrete planks may even have been coated in Artex, a material that contains asbestos.
‘Covid was easy compared with this’
All public buildings are required to maintain asbestos registers, identifying the location of any use of the material. But a report by the Health and Safety Executive in July revealed that a third of the schools it inspected in the course of a year had been warned of “non-compliance” in their legal duty to manage asbestos effectively. It said that often inspectors had found that there was no up-to-date survey clearly showing the location of any asbestos, or that schools were not regularly monitoring the condition of parts of the buildings containing it.
Even if asbestos is not present, replacing panels affected by RAAC is extremely difficult, said Tagg. “You’re talking about effectively removing a roof. So you have to ask yourself the cost benefit of replacing a roof of a building that is 40 or 50 years old. Are you after another 20 years of life, or is it better to replace the building as a whole with something that has a 50-year life? It comes down to money — and budgets aren’t there to do that kind of work.”
Furious politicians and teachers asked why the decision to close schools was taken so late. Evans said: “This is the most challenging thing I have ever tackled. Covid was easy compared with this. The situation was apparent two years ago — where was the urgency in tackling it?”
Priti Patel, the former home secretary and MP for Witham in Essex, where five schools have been affected, said: “Ministers need to explain why the decision to close schools was not taken sooner so that working parents could plan . . . The government will have to account for its actions.”
History of threats
Scientists identified RAAC as a safety issue in the 1990s but the full danger became apparent in 2018 when a roof collapsed at Singlewell Primary in Gravesend, Kent — fortunately on a Saturday. The National Audit Office estimated that 24,000 school buildings — 38 per cent — had exceeded their initial life span.
A government survey of schools was carried out over the past year to identify the presence of RAAC. At the start of summer, with 6,300 schools questioned, 572 with suspected RAAC were identified, with 8,600 yet to respond. More detailed investigations then found that 156 schools had confirmed RAAC, with about 60 of these at critical risk.
Over the summer, three incidents occurred which made officials reconsider their risk assessment. According to a Whitehall source, the first red flag was raised when a sudden collapse occurred at a commercial property in Wales. A few weeks later an RAAC beam slipped at an educational institution in Scotland in a setting that would not have been considered critical. Then, just a week ago, a ceiling fell in a school in England.
Although nobody was hurt in any of these incidents, officials realised that schools that had previously been identified as “non-critical” were at risk of sudden collapse.
Tagg says that the issue spreads far more widely than schools. The NHS has known for years that it has RAAC in its hospitals, and has identified risk areas and started taking remedial measures. But other public sector buildings such as courts and police stations are also likely to contain the substance. “Any flat-roofed public sector building built in about 30 years from the 1950s could potentially include it,” he said.
Reminder: Michael Gove scrapped the Building Schools for the Future plan in 2010 which directly would have stopped this.
The asbestos is now structural since the concrete is doing fuck all
Only crocidolite and amosite were banned in 1985, Chrysotile wasn’t banned until 1999.
Genuine question – what happens when a school closes with these issues? Where do the teachers and pupils go? 👀
Hundreds of schools across the country were built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete between the 1960s and 1990s, with the buildings having a life span of around 30 years.