§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ottaway.]
7.49 pm§ Mr. Clive Betts (Sheffield, Attercliffe)I want to address the House on the subject of Derwent system schools generally and in Sheffield, and I will refer to three schools in Attercliffe that are experiencing particular difficulties.
The Derwent building system was used in the construction of a number of schools in this country in the 1950s. It has been difficult obtaining from the Department of Education and Employment information on the number of Derwent schools built in this country. Perhaps the Minister has those details. I believe that there are more than 100 such schools throughout the country. The Government's latest estimate, in response to a parliamentary question that I asked three years ago, was that it would cost about £300 million to replace Derwent schools.
Sheffield has eight Derwent schools. Seven are mainstream schools that were inherited from the old Derbyshire council prior to boundary changes, one of which is being dealt with by transferring it from its existing building to a more traditional one at Carter Lodge school, where the secondary school has closed. I thank the Minister for his help in arranging that transfer and the necessary credit approvals to fund it. That leaves Birley Spa primary school, Birley primary school and Birley nursery school in my constituency, and three other schools in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie). In case there is a danger of entering into a political debate about who must take responsibility for constructing Derwent system schools, I understand that several are located in Essex. Local authorities of all political complexions and persuasions have been responsible for Derwent system schools in the past.
The schools provided reasonable and adequate accommodation for many years until 1987, when the Health and Safety Executive found severe structural problems. I will go into all the complications, but, in essence, it was found that water from the flat roofs of the schools was running down the walls and rotting the timbers. One problem with the Derwent system is that the roof is held up by the walls alone, so if they start to rot the roof will eventually collapse.
The prognosis was that the life of the buildings could be prolonged provided that structural support work was undertaken. One can see today visible and physical evidence of the props that were installed to support the roofs and walls. Even though that work cost £1 million, it is only an interim, temporary measure and continuing regular inspections and further repair and structure will be required. Derwent system schools have other problems. They have poor energy efficiency, and higher general repair and cleaning costs.
Every so often, the local authority is charged with sending its structural engineers to check the schools, and it then places orders for the necessary work.
One consequence of the situation is a great deal of uncertainty for pupils, parents and staff and a large continuing cost for the local authority. From the 867 beginning, the authority has tried to reassure parents and staff that there was no immediate safety problem—that the structural support work would deal with the safety aspect. Even then, there is still the problem of not knowing how long the schools can continue to exist—of parents not knowing, when their children start school at the age of five, whether the school will still be there when the children are 11.
In 1987, after the authority had consulted the staff and parents and the buildings had been examined, it was agreed that a phased replacement programme was needed. As the schools were all built by Derbyshire council and are all located in a certain part of Sheffield, it would be impossible to replace them all at one go. South-east Sheffield is the area of highest population growth in the city. There is considerable new building and the area's birth rate, as in other parts of the city, is not falling. The local authority has gone through a rigorous process of removing surplus places from schools throughout the city. I had a slight disagreement with the Minister over the closure of Shirebrook school, which falls within the two-mile radius of Birley Spa school. Shirebrook was closed with the agreement of the Minister on the initial decision of the city council. We now have extra mobiles because the schools in the area are overcrowded and cannot accept any more pupils.
I do not accept that the Derwent system schools can be taken out and not replaced. Birley Spa, which is the first school on the authority's list for replacement, has 450 pupils. Birley Spa primary school has 500 pupils, and about 80 children attend Birley Spa nursery. The school lives of all those children are blighted by the uncertainty of the current situation.
Since 1987, the local authority has tried repeatedly to secure Government agreement on a replacement programme. Last year the Minister was good enough to meet a delegation from the local education authority. The head teacher of Birley Spa school, Mr. Geoff Mawson, came along to persuade the Minister that action was needed. As usual in meetings with the Minister, we got tea and a bit of sympathy but no action or resources. The LEA has £1 million of credit approvals this year for dealing with school building problems in the Sheffield area. The cost of replacing the school in the worst condition, Birley Spa, is estimated at £2 million, so there is no way that the LEA could redirect credit approvals already given to solve that one problem. There are other problems—not least to do with rewiring schools throughout the city.
Our argument is that this is a case of exceptional basic need and that credit approval should be given in that respect, particularly as trie situation has worsened. If the Minister did not see fit to grant a specified credit approval for Birley Spa school when we met him last year, I hope that he will pause to reflect and think again, because further evidence that has come to light is pertinent and ought to influence the Minister's thinking.
The proper regular inspections that have been rigorously undertaken by the local authority have revealed the need for additional safety work. That is not surprising because we knew that the buildings were deteriorating. When external panels were removed from Birley Spa school in the summer to reveal the timber, the amount of rot was found to be so substantial that £100,000 must be spent on that school alone. That expenditure will not cure the problem but will give the school a two-year life. Thereafter, further sums will have to be spent regularly. Engineers and architects in 868 Sheffield council's design and building services department calculated, assuming that the condition of the buildings does not miraculously improve, that it will cost £1 million to keep Birley Spa open for another 10 years. Clearly, spending £1 million on a building which we know will be incapable of providing a decent framework for a school in years to come is an utter waste of money.
The authority had to decide whether to spend £100,000 to give the school a guaranteed life of two years. It did not know that the work would cost £100,000 until it had been started. It was a case of stripping out the panels and finding the rot. The authority could, alternatively, have tried to do something much more fundamental, but the resources were not available and, even then, the problem would not have been cured permanently.
The authority is making decisions in a vacuum. It does not know where the Government stand. If the Government said that the authority should maintain the building for two years and they would then deal with the problem permanently, we would know what to expect. If the Government said that the authority should maintain the building for five years, agreed to put their officials to work with council officials, agreed a five-year programme and then agreed a programme of phased replacement, we would know what to expect. But we do not know what is happening. All we know is that the Government have decided that the school does not need replacing this year, but we do not know whether they think that it will need replacing next year or the year after. We do not know how much money to spend on the school in the interim to maintain the building. We know that there is no permanent solution—even after spending £100,000.
The cost of the repair work does not come from thin air, but out of the budget allocated for the repair of other schools throughout the city, which means that the other 187 schools in Sheffield will receive less money. That will often mean that a flat roof in another traditionally built school will not be repaired or will be patched up rather than replaced, which will cause it further problems in future. That is a short-term, uneconomical way of tackling problems.
It is not merely the authority that is placed in a difficult financial bind. The problems of wood rot, panels falling apart and the ingress of water cause difficulties inside Birley school, which affects the authority's expenditure— from its own budget—on internal fittings and the school's general appearance. The head of Birley said that in the past four years—before those additional problems—he has had to spend £50,000 from his school budget. As he put it, that money could have been used to provide three extra teachers or additional books and equipment, which the school badly needs. Birley Spa school has the worst problems because it has a two-tier structure, but the other schools are in a similar position.
We cannot simply wait until repair work on the school is completely out of the question, buildings start falling down and, for safety reasons, pupils are taken out and have nowhere else to go. The authority has carried out a detailed analysis of surplus places in the area, and there are no other places for the pupils to go. Additional building work is being carried out in the area, and a number of schools are full and are having to make use of mobile classrooms. Surplus places might exist, but only outside the two-mile radius, and it would be unfair to 869 make children face the prospect of being bussed around the city, without any planned replacement for the school having been agreed.
We cannot contemplate spending £1 million on a series of temporary running repairs to maintain a structure that has no long-term future. That would be economic madness from anybody's perspective, whether the Government, the city council or the people who pay the bills—the council taxpayers of Sheffield and the taxpayers of the country. We need a replacement programme. What is happening is not merely a matter of cost and economics—it affects children's education. We might have disagreements across the Chamber about whether class sizes affect children's education, but I hope that there will be no disagreement over the fact that substantial building work in schools, as well as general uncertainty, affects children's education.
Birley Spa school draws pupils from an estate which is recognised by the city council as an area of deprivation that is in need of urgent attention and has top priority. The most recent survey showed that 42 per cent. of families in that community were on income support and more than 20 per cent. of them were unemployed. Such deprivation means that education must be taken even more seriously there than elsewhere, although I believe that education should be taken extremely seriously everywhere. The school wants to develop some form of nursery provision to deal with the problems of deprivation.
The issue does not merely involve economics, but the life of a school. Geoff Mawson, the head of Birley Spa primary school, has sent me a letter in which he explains that the repairs this year have cost £100,000. He understands that the money is taken out of the authority's general budget for schools, which means that other schools will also suffer. He explains that £51,000 has been spent out of the school budget and, on top of that, an extra £8,000—double the school's allocated budget for repairs and maintenance—has had to be spent on dealing with the problem in the past few months.
In his letter Mr. Mawson states:
The disruption has been heartbreaking. Since September we have had a rota of 66 children sharing one classroom at a time whilst their rooms were being repaired. This is the third time this has taken place in six years! The youngest children have suffered the longest with repairs still taking place! There was no indoor PE for the first half term. There were fewer school assemblies as displaced classes were housed in the hall. Dinners have been disrupted. The shock of the building being condemned for a second time gave little time to us to plan for this emergency.The repairs and external painting will only guarantee the school's safety for two years! The school building is already an expensive drain on the LEA and the school's resources. The scaffolding has now gone, but the children have lived through another traumatic period. All this has been at an educational cost.The only agreement seems to be that we need a new building, but no-one can tell me what will happen when this two year period comes to an end. We are a large Primary school, families want to send their children to this school, but the uncertain future is a case of trying to manage the impossible. The children, parents and staff deserve better than this."I agree—they deserve much better. Mr. Mawson continues:I am writing on their behalf to make you aware of our desperate situation and to ask you through your position as a Member of Parliament to draw this to the attention of the Minister concerned.870 I am doing so tonight in the most public way.I was speaking on the telephone this afternoon to the head of Birley primary school—Birley Spa and Birley are two separate schools, although their names are similar. I asked Mr. Blakey, the head, how things were going. He said, "If you can hear me through the noise, we are knee deep in the middle of building work. We have had three months of disruption out of the school year." Builders are outside the school, stripping the panels while children of five are running around. It is difficult to protect children and educate them at the same time under those conditions.
Mr. Blakey said that it was a difficult process for young children to go through. He said that there were no spare classrooms in the school, which was full, and the dining room was having to be used, which disrupted meals. He said that the school was in a state of chaos and turmoil, and the children's education must be suffering as a result. He said that he hoped that it was the last time that the school had to suffer in that way. There is a nursery next to the school, where children under five have to suffer the same disruption and where their educational provision is similarly affected. It is unacceptable.
I hope that tonight the Minister will give a number of commitments. Perhaps we can even reach some agreement. The position is unacceptable and we cannot allow it to continue; it is affecting our children's education. All the money that we are spending—we can have disagreements about whether it is enough—is clearly not being spent to best effect. The children's work is being disrupted and money is being spent on building work which only temporarily relieves the problem and postpones the school's replacement. That is not good economics.
If the Minister agrees to another meeting will he agree to it being held at the schools in question? Instead of sitting in his office in the Department for Education and Employment, watching the water flow from the fountains in the beautiful atrium which was built at enormous expense, will he come to the schools where water is pouring down the walls, causing the timber to rot and disrupting the educational lives of children? Will he come to the schools to see the problems for himself, meet the parents and staff and listen to what they have had to go through?
I am looking for a commitment of credit approval for the next financial year first to replace Birley Spa school, which all the heads in the area, and the governors, have accepted is in the worst condition of all the schools to which I have referred because it is a two-storey structure. The other schools should be subject to agreed replacement, with Department officials talking to council officials and agreeing on the best way forward. I want to see an end to the disruption of education, the replacement of lousy buildings and an end to uncertainty.
The schools have kept going and they have maintained high standards. I am aware of the great efforts that have been made. The heads have shown extraordinary commitment, as have their staff. Great credit is due to them for the way in which they have coped. They have continued to educate children in extremely difficult circumstances. The schools are excellent but the buildings are appallingly inadequate. Only the Government can implement a policy that will replace the present buildings with decent new buildings in which children can be educated properly. Those new buildings will match the commitment of the staff to provide good education, and their commitment will have even greater results if new school buildings are provided, which the children deserve.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire)The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) has raised an important issue. As he said, this is the second occasion on which I have heard his arguments for Birley Spa school and others. Last time, of course, responsibility for capital expenditure came within my remit. This time, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) is the responsible Minister. I undertake to draw the hon. Gentleman's comments to my hon. Friend at the end of the debate. They will receive her full attention.
The Government are concerned that schools should offer their pupils a good and safe learning environment. The statutory duty to ensure that school buildings are safe lies with school governors and local education authorities. The hon. Gentleman knows that. We share a similar background as former leaders of local authorities. To help governors and LEAs discharge the statutory duty effectively, my Department provides advice to local authorities and school governors to alert them to building defects of potentially national significance. The procedure is intended to act as an early-warning system so that authorities can plan accordingly.
In essence, my Department issues a so-called defects letter to all authorities whenever news of a particular building problem could usefully be broadcast. Usually one authority will spearhead the fault-finding process and let the Department know. The scheme has proved so useful that a pack of defects letters is now included in the "welcome pack" for schools entering the grant-maintained sector. When appropriate, the Department will also commission research into the defect, usually through the Building Research Establishment, and disseminate the findings to local authorities.
As the hon. Gentleman said, it was the Sheffield LEA which informed us that it had identified problems with some 1950s Derwent timber framed schools. They were manufactured by Vic Hallam plc in the 1950s and 1960s. The Derwent system comprises permanent buildings of one or two storeys, mainly based on a timber post and plywood box beam framing construction. The buildings are braced by tongue-and-groove roof boards and framed external wall panels. Later forms of the system used different types of cladding such as brick work and tile hanging, although the same principle of structure remained.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, Sheffield LEA reported to my Department that it had found deterioration in the external walls and in certain internal structural members of Derwent buildings. Other common faults were rotting of the timber columns between window sill and floor level, rotting of timber internal columns between floor level and lower ceiling level at the point at which a change of room height occurred and rotting of external columns over their entire height, when adjacent to rainwater outlets, together with other examples of junctions between plywood beams and timber posts that were exposed to water leaks.
Sheffield alerted us to the problem in 1987. Later that year, the Department issued a defects letter to LEAs informing them that further investigations were being carried out by the authority. The Department stressed the importance of carrying out adequate surveys to determine individual building needs.
872 The Department commissioned some research into the system and sent a copy of the report to LEAs in March 1988. Principally, the report made recommendations for the investigation of Derwent system buildings, but also emphasised the importance of checking all buildings with a similar construction. The Department invited authorities to advise it of any further cases that they identified. There has been only a limited response. I am advised that we are aware of only between 10 and 15 cases. There are, of course, other timber-framed buildings that have not necessarily been specifically identified as Derwent constructions. We are well aware of the difficulties in Sheffield schools, to which the hon. Gentleman has diligently drawn to our attention in the past.
I have already said that schools must offer a good and safe environment for their pupils. We are committed to improving the condition of school buildings. To that end, substantial capital resources have been provided in recent years to enable local education authorities and school governors to improve their building stock. We estimate that, between 1990–91 and 1993–94, LEAs spent about £2.7 billion on their schools.
Generally, capital sums allocated by my Department are not tied to specific projects. Local authorities are given permission to borrow up to a certain level to fund capital programmes for all their services, including education. This borrowing limit—it is called the basic credit approval—is made up of the sum of the annual capital guidelines for different services that are issued to the authority net of any anticipated receipts.
Ultimately, therefore, it is up to LEAs to decide their own priorities, both between services and projects within services. Nor is the basic credit approval, which is issued by the Department of the Environment, the upper limit on authorities' capital spending. Authorities can invest their own capital receipts as they see fit, and they can use funds from their revenue budgets for capital purposes if they wish. Recent relaxations to local authority capital controls—in particular, a reduction in the rate of set-aside required for debt redemption—will help LEAs to maximise the use to which they can put capital assets.
I acknowledge, however, that in recent years tight public expenditure survey settlements have meant that allocations available for improvement or replacement work have not been as high as some local authorities might have wished. It is worth explaining, therefore, that the criteria for allocating capital resources were agreed with the local authority associations over 10 years ago.
Priority in the allocation of schools' annual capital guidelines is first given to commitments arising from projects started in previous years. That is fairly obvious. After that comes the provision of new school places in areas of population growth, basic need, and exceptional basic need, which is a sub-category of basic need. Exceptional basic need essentially covers cases where a surveyor has condemned teaching places or described them as unsafe or structurally unsound. Exceptional basic need cover is given only where repair is either impracticable or actually more expensive than replacement. Such instances are usually emergency cases, but in the light of the hon. Gentleman's comments I confirm to him sincerely that we shall examine extremely carefully any evidence which he or the LEA may forward 873 to my Department that may show that in the school or schools that he mentioned the problem comes under the qualifications of exceptional basic need.
§ Mr. BettsThe Minister has said that exceptional basic need covers a school that cannot be repaired or where repair becomes more expensive than replacement. Does the Minister accept that account should be taken of repairs that are immediately necessary and repairs that will continue to be necessary over a period of, for example, five or 10 years? The cost of new buildings should be weighed against repairing existing structures if repair work will have to be continued for five or 10 years.
§ Mr. SquireI cannot deny that there was a strong strain of common sense in what the hon. Gentleman said. I am happy to revisit the priorities that were established—I may well have made that clear to him in a previous responsibility—particularly in the light of the points that he is making. At the present time, I can reiterate only what the priority was. He will appreciate that, because there are invariably more bids than there is funding available, it would require broad agreement across local authorities, and I would be happy to receive that. There may be opportunity for local authorities to pursue that with me or my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham.
The other priority category covers the implementation of cost-effective schemes to remove surplus school cases, and the hon. Gentleman is aware of their impact. We also make allowance for liabilities for work at voluntary aided schools and for approved capital work in special education. The remaining resources are then distributed by a formula to contribute towards the cost of all other capital-related work at schools. The latter category may include cases that are not exceptional basic need but where replacement is considered to be the most sensible option. Obviously, local education authorities are free to include Derwent buildings in annual capital bids for exceptional basic need cover if they think that a case meets the definition.
874 Alternatively, LEAs are free to bid at any time for a supplementary credit approval from the Department's limited capital reserve. There are always many competing bids for the resources and only the most urgent and deserving bids are successful. These can sometimes include cases that are not exceptional basic need but that nevertheless appear urgent. We also give priority to any supplementary credit approval bids, involving private sector investment in line with the principles of the private finance initiative.
Very substantial sums have been made available for capital work in schools—more than £600 million this year. Nevertheless, each year, we have to make tough discussions about what to include in our list of successful projects. The hon. Gentleman has schools with Derwent buildings in his constituency, and he highlighted in particular, but not exclusively, Birley Spa. When we met to discuss this issue last year, I explained that a bid for exceptional basic need could be given only where repair would be more expensive than replacement. Surplus provision in the area was also a factor. The LEA has since applied for funding under a supplementary credit approval, which was not successful in the most recent round because of competing bids against very limited resources.
We have made careful note of the hon. Gentleman's arguments on behalf of those schools. I can repeat only that the crucial factor is the availability of resources in each financial year and, of course, the priority criteria, to which I referred. Exceptional basic need is, as its name implies, an exceptional category, essentially for the replacement of condemned buildings.
As I said at the outset, this is the second occasion on which I have discussed this issue with the hon. Gentleman—in rather grander surroundings than our first meeting. On each occasion, I have been impressed by the sincerity and strength of his arguments, and in particular his commitment to Birley Spa school. I shall take that message back to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and ask her carefully to consider the points that he has made tonight when making her decisions for capital allocations in future.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes past Eight o 'clock.