Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faced a mounting crisis over Britain’s crumbling schools after a former government official said on Monday that Sunak had refused to rebuild more schools while he was head of the treasury, despite warnings that lightweight concrete used in hundreds of buildings was a risk to life.

The former official, Jonathan Slater, who held one of the most senior roles in the Department of Education, said that in 2021, when Sunak was chancellor of the Exchequer, he cut in half an internal recommendation to rebuild 100 schools every year. That number had already been scaled back from the department’s original recommendation in 2018 that the government rebuild 300 to 400 schools a year.

“We weren’t just saying there was a significant risk of fatality,” Slater said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We were saying there was a critical risk to life if this programme is not funded.”

For the Conservatives, who are burdened by a stagnant economy and lengthy waiting lists at hospitals, a crisis in schools poses an acute political risk.

They already lag the Labour Party by nearly 20 percentage points in polls and are resorting to divisive issues like immigration and climate policy, to draw sharp contrasts with their opponents.

Sunak heatedly rejected Slater’s charges, saying it was “completely and utterly wrong” to hold him responsible for the funding shortfall. He said that as chancellor, he had announced a 10-year programme to rebuild 500 schools. He said the problems with the concrete, which was used from the 1950s to the 1990s has been found to have deteriorated, affecting just 5 per cent of England’s 22,000 schools.

Last week, the government ordered more than 100 schools known to contain the material not to reopen after the summer vacation or to move their students online or to temporary buildings. And the prospect that hundreds more might be affected has disrupted the lives of thousands of families, raising anxieties that have cast a pall over the start of the school year.

Builders used the material, known as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete or RAAC (pronounced rack), in roofs and walls because it is lightweight and cheaper to work with than traditional concrete. But engineers say it degrades more quickly than standard reinforced concrete, with a life span of only about 30 years.

New York Times News Service