Concrete, RAAC and ruin

This week a well-coordinated media panic has been initiated suggesting that some schools in the United Kingdom may suddenly collapse, implying that sending your children to school could expose them to unacceptable risk.  Left leaning politicians have amplified the panic and used this story as an effective stick with which to beat the Conservatives with.  Attempts to introduce an element of proportionality are dismissed as a callous disregard for children’s safety.  At the same time, parents have become anxious about schooling their children and stressed about possible disruption to their lives.  It feels like we’ve seen this movie before?

A sober examination of the known shortcomings of RAAC does not appear to warrant the current hysteria. The construction technique was pretty much halted in the late 1990’s due to some concerns raised over “excessive deflections and cracking” of roof planks designed before 1980. However, a document which was published by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in 1996 also states that   “no specific examples of excessive deflections of floors have been reported”[1].  So, no particular indication that this material has suddenly – just at the end of August 2023 – become unsafe.

The timing of the concern over structural stability of RAAC does come as a surprise, because this has come about at the very start of term and after a long summer schools recess where inspection of this material could easily have been undertaken whilst school buildings were empty.  There has been one well document incidence of the collapse of a RAAC plank in a school in Gravesend in December 2018, almost 5 years ago[2] which resulted in clear guidance on inspection and replacement (only if necessary).

It is worth remembering that the United Kingdom has more than 32,000 thousand schools and probably somewhere in the region of three times that number of school buildings.  It is also important to remember the fact that none of the UK’s 10.3 million school pupils have ever been injured by RAAC, the lost time injuries frequency (LTIFR) from RAAC is zero.

The proximate cause of the current panic appears to be a Department of Education briefing from August 2023[3], which referred to the collapse of a RAAC panel roof.  Oddly, no specifics were given about this collapse and despite the current media obsession with RAAC, no information has emerged about where, or when this incident took place.

The backbone of safe buildings and schools is regular inspection, coupled with adequate funding for remedial repairs.  The guidance on RAAC has repeatedly focused on simple steps to identify and inspect RAAC, in the same way that you would inspect any other building issue.  Perhaps the original life expectancy has been exceeded, but it isn’t the first material to do this. What do we usually do in that instance; we inspect, take core samples and write reports on our findings. Our Structural Engineers are held to incredibly high standards and buildings in this country are robust due to our requirements for protection from wind and rain. These standards ensure that buildings do not have a history of suddenly collapsing in this country.

Of course there are budgetary considerations and the fact that the Department of Education has regularly received less money than it has requested, implies that over time underfunded maintenance could lead to increased risks[4].  Unfortunately, many on the Left maintain the delusion that the State should be able to guarantee absolute safety by simply spending more money.  This will never be a realistic prospect since absolute safety is unattainable and money is limited.  Similar delusions led the UK into the lockdown catastrophe, and to a net debt level already over 100% of GDP at £ 2.5 trillion.

The result of the panic will be that enormous sums of money will now be wasted by panicked schools and bureaucrats busily hiring buildings, marquees and portacabins, probably for no meaningful benefit.  This distracts from the boring and routine task of inspection and maintenance as well as leaving less money in the budget for maintenance leaving schools and other publicly owned assets at increased risk going forward.  At the same time, opportunists will cash in on emergency building hire.

The real villains of the piece are the fear promoting media outlets and the Leftist politicians scoring cheap political points at the cost of disputing schooling, causing unjustified anxiety and causing public money to be wasted. 

The only thing that is really crumbling is the our collective inability to think sensibly about risk and respond rationally and proportionally to everyday issues like RAAC (and COVID).  Ultimately the tendency to panic together with the cynical fear mongering of mainstream media and dishonest politicians is much, much more dangerous than RAAC concrete could ever be.