Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts
Monday 17th April 2023

(1 year, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan
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The Department is gathering information from the responsible bodies in all schools, further education colleges and local authority maintained nurseries. We are asking them to complete a questionnaire on the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete on their premises. That questionnaire covers nearly 22,000 schools, 230 further education settings and 371 nurseries. It is the responsibility of academy trusts and local authorities to maintain those settings and keep them safe, but we want settings to submit a response to the RAAC questionnaire, and I urge all those that have not yet done that to do so, so that we can take action.

Lord Cryer Portrait John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
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One of the first decisions that the Government made on coming to power was to cancel seven school rebuilding programmes in my constituency. Since then, we have seen greater cuts to local government spending, so the buildings have continued to disintegrate. Will the Secretary of State guarantee that some of the resources that she has mentioned will go to schools in Redbridge and Waltham Forest, to stop their further disintegration?

Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan
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Since 2015, we have allocated over £15 billion to maintaining and improving the condition of the school estate. Our school rebuilding programme will transform buildings at 500 schools; 400 of those have already been announced, including 239 in December, but there are more slots to allocate. We will prioritise buildings in poor condition and those with potential safety issues. The Minister for Schools is always happy to meet to discuss specific schools.