SEVEN years ago, Malcolm Fraser, a prominent architect, resigned from a Scottish Executive advisory panel, voicing concerns that schools built using private finance could damage children. He said that some schools constructed with public-private partnership (PPP) funding had suffered “catastrophically poor” design that would “blight the lives of those who learn in them”.
In his resignation letter he wrote: “The general silence of the building industry on this issue is a disgrace. All know of its fundamental flaws, but there is a river of money flowing from it towards us so we keep schtum.” Prescient words, indeed.
Yesterday, a detailed report into 17 schools in Edinburgh, all built under PPP, found that all were badly built and poorly inspected. How could such a state of affairs be permitted? It is disturbing.
There were five “avoidable incidents”, found the report’s author, Professor John Cole. In one, a nine-tonne wall collapsed at Edinburgh’s Oxgangs Primary School. Had it collapsed just one hour later, the consequences might have been appalling. Five might not seem like a huge number but, as Prof Cole correctly pointed out, one collapse is one too many.
In all five cases, it appeared that, at the time of building, proper quality control could have identified and rectified the basic construction faults. As The Herald has noted, PPP allowed schools to be built that might otherwise have remained a blueprint, given pressures on council budgets. New, fit-for-purpose schools could encourage more pupils to flourish. The downside was impossible to ignore: would taxpayers be saddled with the costs of long-term maintenance and repairs?
Campbell Martin, a former Independent MSP, said seven years ago that he feared companies would do the “minimum” amount of maintenance during their contracts and that, by the time the buildings were handed back 30 years later, they might be “worthless”. Prof Cole’s report will do little to assuage fears about the efficacy of PPP.
But there is another, equally serious point. The main contractor in the £360 million Edinburgh schools project said the bricklayer responsible for the Oxgangs wall would have been aware of the fault and that it was his responsibility to report it to the main contractor. But he did not respond to requests to give evidence to the inquiry; surely an unconscionable, some might even say outrageous, shirking of responsibility and public duty.
The report says the Oxgangs collapse was due to poor construction, inadequate supervision and independent quality assurance, and poor record keeping. Furthermore, several leading bricklayers were reluctant to discuss present practice before the inquiry. And there were problems when it came to accessing records between the “critical” years of 2000 and 2005.
Edinburgh chief executive Andrew Kerr says the findings have implications for similarly built buildings across the UK. The rush to PPP by successive governments has delivered many new public buildings but this report poses serious questions that demand an airing, among them: at what cost?
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