| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
HONG KONG (OVERSEAS PUBLIC SERVANTS) BILL [MONEY]
Queen's recommendation having been signified--
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 50A(1)(a),
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Ottaway.]
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
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 the 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
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
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:
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.
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Hong Kong (Overseas Public Servants) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State under or by virtue of the Act.--
[Mr. Ottaway.]
Derwent System Schools
7.49 pm
"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."
I am doing so tonight in the most public way.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |