Sunak caused RAAC crisis by slashing school repair budget in 2019 when chancellor Jonathan Slater

Rishi Sunak caused RAAC crisis by slashing school repair budget in 2019 when chancellor Jonathan Slater on Radio 4 Today 04Sep23
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Sunak refused to fully fund repairs of England’s crumbling schools, says ex-official

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/04/england-crumbling-schools-rishi-sunak-repairs-civil-servant

Former top civil servant at Department for Education PM says there was evidence of ‘critical risk to life’ when PM was chancellor

First published on Mon 4 Sep 2023 08.30 BST

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 building new free schools was a greater funding priority, 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.”