PM shown evidence of ‘critical risk to life’ when chancellor, says former top civil servant at Department for Education

Rishi Sunak refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was “a critical risk to life” from crumbling concrete panels, the Department for Education’s former head civil servant has said.

After the department told Sunak’s Treasury that there was a need to rebuild 300 to 400 schools a year in England, he gave funding for only 100, which was then halved to 50, said Jonathan Slater, the permanent secretary of the department from 2016 to 2020.

Conservative ministers more widely believed a greater funding priority was to build new free schools, Slater told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, as pupils returned to many schools in England for the new term.

“For me as an official, it seemed that should have been second to safety,” Slater said. “But politics is about choices. And that was a choice they made.”

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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Rishi Sunak refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was “a critical risk to life” from crumbling concrete panels, the Department for Education’s former head civil servant has said.

    Keegan insisted the DfE had taken “a very cautious approach” to the issues, and that parents should be reassured that “the vast majority of children will be going back today”.

    In a damning interview on Monday morning, Slater said two surveys of Raac in schools had uncovered the extent of work needed on a building method supposed to be time-limited to about 30 years of use, with a risk in some cases of sudden and catastrophic failure beyond this.

    While he was permanent secretary, in 2018, a concrete block fell from the roof of a primary school, Slater added, “so it wasn’t just a risk.

    Munira Wilson, the party’s education spokesperson, said: “This bombshell revelation shows the blame for this concrete crisis lies firmly at Rishi Sunak’s door.

    Speaking earlier on Sky News, Keegan said the DfE “isn’t strictly responsible for the [school] buildings”, as they are maintained by councils or academy chains, but that it would fund any work from the department’s existing budget.

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