Lancashire County Council said a small number of schools were being surveyed as a precaution
Lancashire County Council says that it is carrying out surveys on what it describes as “a small number” of local schools because of the possible presence of the type of concrete that has caused the sudden closure of more than 150 others nationwide.
“Those surveys have been coming in and the vast majority say there is no RAAC. [For] those schools that say, ‘We might have RAAC’, we have then sent in surveyors – and they are then saying… in the majority of cases, [the schools] don’t actually have RAAC. But in some cases they have, so we know those schools that have RAAC from those [survey] returns and we know the condition of it,” Mr Gibb added in his Radio 4 interview.
“We’d like to think that Lancashire County Council has got – and are deploying – the resources so that they can reassure staff, parents and pupils that buildings are not at risk of imminent collapse. But we need a belt-and-braces approach.
The risks of RAAC – whose make-up has been likened to an Aero chocolate bar – have been known about for several years. Two school roofs collapsed in 2017 and 2018, the latter at a Kent primary during the holidays. The government says that the decision to close RAAC facilities came after a change in advice which it received this summer.
The shift in stance raises the prospect of affected schools having to find temporary classrooms or even return to lockdown-style remote learning. The number of schools on the national closure list could yet rise, as it is not clear whether all establishments have completed their survey. It has been reported that more than 50 schools have already put mitigations in place.
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