Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether (a) schools and (b) colleges which had taken remedial action on RAAC before last week will be included in the funding announced for schools required to fix unsafe RAAC.

It is the responsibility of those who run schools - academy trusts, Local Authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies - to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools and to alert the Department if there is a serious concern with a building. It has always been the case that where the Department is made aware a building may pose an immediate risk, immediate action is taken.

The Department will spend whatever it takes to keep children safe. The Department will work with the relevant responsible body, which will depend on the type of school or college with confirmed RAAC. The Department’s immediate support will be managed from unallocated departmental budgets. This will not have an impact on existing programmes.

The Department will fund emergency mitigation work needed to make buildings safe, including installing alternative classroom space where necessary. Where schools and colleges need additional help with revenue costs, like transport to locations or temporarily renting a local hall or office, the Department will provide that support for all reasonable requests. The Department will also fund longer term refurbishment projects, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, to rectify the RAAC issue in the long term. Schools and colleges will either be offered capital grants to fund refurbishment work to permanently remove RAAC, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, including through the School Rebuilding Programme. The Department will set out further details for affected schools and colleges in due course.

Responsible bodies for schools and colleges with confirmed RAAC that have already taken remedial action should discuss their expenditure with their RAAC caseworker.

​The Department will always put the safety and wellbeing of children and staff in education settings at the heart of its policy decisions. The Government has taken more proactive action to identify and mitigate RAAC in education settings than the devolved administrations in the UK, or indeed, governments overseas.