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A bitter blame game has erupted in latest days, as ministers scramble to pass the buck over failures to take away bolstered autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) from college buildings
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A Tory minister has admitted Rishi Sunak DID reject a bid to rebuild 200 schools a year as Chancellor – after Mr Sunak claimed it was “totally bad” to blame him for the dodgy concrete disaster.
Schools chief Carve Gibb confirmed the Department for Education (DfE) had asked for cash to refurbish 150 more schools than they had been doing a year in 2021. However the Treasury rejected the bid. It comes after a bombshell intervention from ex-top official Jonathan Slater, who said Mr Sunak rejected calls to repair more schools regardless of warnings from officials of a “critical threat to existence” from dodgy college buildings.
A bitter blame game has erupted in latest days, as ministers scramble to pass the buck over failures to take away bolstered autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) from college buildings. With thousands of kids shut out of the classroom, bungling Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was caught on camera on Monday moaning that she had achieved a “f****** accurate job” whereas others “have been sat on their a***s.
The Top Minister said yesterday it was “totally and totally bad” to blame him, adding: “One among the first things I did as Chancellor, in my first spending overview in 2020, was to announce a unusual 10-year college re-building programme for 500 schools. Now that equates to about 50 schools a year, that shall be refurbished or rebuilt.
Today, Mr Gibb told Sky News: “We achieve in a bid for 200, however what Rishi agreed to was to continue the rebuilding programme at 50 a year, according to what we’ve been doing since we came into workplace. Fifty college buildings a year is what the gadget can deal with, and for certain we achieve in a bid for 200, however the Treasury then has to compare that bid with all the varied priorities apt across Whitehall.”
It comes as Britain’s top spending watchdog said chaos in Britain’s crumbling schools is a results of the Tories’ “sticking plaster approach” to maintenance. National Audit Place of work chief Gareth Davies said the Authorities would pause up wasting cash on repairs after neglecting “unflashy” work on college buildings – regardless of warnings over the usage of dodgy concrete.
“The underlying challenge is that adequately funding to blame capital programmes for our public products and companies leaves less for greater profile initiatives,” Mr Davies wrote in The Occasions. “Failure to chew this bullet leads to sad value, with extra cash required for emergency measures or a sticking plaster approach.”
Mr Gibb, who has been in post for 10 of the Tories’ 13 years in energy, rejected Mr Davies’ criticism. He told the BBC : “We take any official picture from the National Audit Place of work extraordinarily significantly, however I don’t agree with his feedback in his article. We are spending £1.8billion a year on maintenance and enhancements to the faculty structure.”
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