Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Anna Firth Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Very happily. The hon. Lady might work out that I do know this in great detail. The portacabins that we were procuring for weeks were for the 56 buildings that we had already identified with RAAC that were critical. We took those immediately out of use, so we had that need for those 52—it was actually 52. The 104 that were non-critical are now deemed critical because of this new evidence, so we will continue to do that. We have contacted more suppliers already and we have that in place, because we do not want to have a delay there.

I am always happy to visit the hon. Lady in Birmingham. In terms of the particular Ofsted case, if she wants to give me the details we will see, if it is appropriate, whether we can delay it. Ofsted usually delays if there are some specific issues within a school, so we can raise that with it.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Putting the safety of children first is obviously right, but the Secretary of State will know that Kingsdown School, a special school in my constituency of Southend, houses some of the most vulnerable children in Southend and indeed the south-east, and is currently closed due to RAAC. The headmistress, Louise Robinson, and the new cabinet portfolio holder Helen Boyd at Southend City Council have been brilliant, working around the clock—I thank the Schools Minister too for his support last week—but they need three things. They need the result of a risk assessment, some demountable classrooms and some structural remediation measures. Will the Secretary of State please write and tell us exactly when those will materialise?

[Gillian Keegan]

I am very happy to. I know that Kingsdown was one of the first identified, and obviously has additional special needs as well. A caseworker is looking into that. Also, just so that it is clear why we made the decision not to publish all the names initially, Kingsdown’s name was published by the council and it was inundated by media, which made it incredibly difficult. The school asked for our help in ensuring that it did not have too much of a media distraction, so we really needed to be conscious of that as well.