Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the guidance entitled Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC): guidance for responsible bodies and education settings with confirmed RAAC, published by her Department on 31 August 2023, when her Department received new evidence about the safety risk posed by RAAC that led her Department to publish revised guidance.

Nothing is more important than the safety of children and staff. The Department discovered details of three new cases over the summer, where RAAC that would have been graded as non-critical has failed. The first of these was in a commercial setting. The second was in a school in a different educational jurisdiction.

It was right to carefully consider the cases and scrutinise the technical details from these. The Department’s technical officials were able to investigate the situation in one case where the plank that had failed was fully intact as it was resting on a steel beam after it failed. They concluded that it would previously been rated non-critical.

Ministers were carefully considering the first two cases, and advice from officials, when a third failure of a panel occurred, at a school in late August. The Department’s technical officials also visited this school to investigate the failure. In light of all three cases, it was right to make the difficult decision to change Departmental guidance for education settings and take a more cautious approach.

Following careful analysis of these recent cases, a precautionary and proactive step has been taken to change the approach to RAAC in education settings ahead of the start of the academic year, as outlined in our guidance.