I thank my noble friend Lady Berridge for her Amendment 109
and for raising the important issue of building safety. I valued the opportunity to speak to her about her concerns last week. We absolutely agree with her about the importance of minimising disruption to education from closed buildings.
Our priority is the safety of pupils and staff. The most effective way of ensuring this is for those with day-to-day control of sites to be responsible. Only they have direct knowledge of the buildings, changes in their condition and how they are being used. As I set out in detail in Committee, the department provides significant capital funding, rebuilding programmes and guidance and support to help the sector deliver its responsibilities. I will say more shortly about how we provide more targeted programmes for specific risks across an estate of approximately 22,000 schools, with buildings of different ages and construction types.
We have carefully considered the scenario my noble friend set out. Our view remains that there are sufficient mechanisms in place to support the sector to keep buildings safe and open. Even if the department took on this role, a power as suggested in the amendment would not in practice speed up the decision-making process for buildings that closed on a precautionary basis. Decisions about whether it is appropriate to close school buildings on safety grounds should, as my noble friend stressed when we met, be based on advice from qualified surveyors. That would remain the case whether the department or a body responsible for school buildings was taking the decisions. We think it is very unlikely that schools would ignore professional advice that they have commissioned which says their buildings are safe; we think they would not want to disrupt education unnecessarily. Where surveys demonstrated issues, appropriate support would of course be available.
A power for the department to make directions about the safety of buildings could undermine incentives to maintain buildings effectively and to carry out appropriate checks, which could reduce safety for pupils and staff. Such a power could also risk some responsible bodies abdicating the decision on whether to keep schools open or reopen them, insisting that the department issue such directions. This could lead to an increased and avoidable loss in education, which I know all noble Lords are keen to prevent.
My noble friend has highlighted the issue of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC, in some buildings. We published guidance on identifying and managing RAAC last year and continue to work across government to understand the issues relating to it better. We recently contacted responsible bodies to ask about their knowledge of RAAC, its presence in their buildings and how they are managing it. I reassure the House that we will follow up rigorously to ensure as complete a response as possible to help inform next steps.
9.45 pm
I can also make a commitment today to continue to engage with responsible bodies so that they are clear that carrying out checks on buildings and undertaking more detailed surveys where necessary are an essential part of fulfilling their broader duties. The department continues to consider carefully what support may be
helpful, such as clarifying for responsible bodies the qualifications that surveyors who are undertaking these surveys should have. I am grateful to my noble friend for her suggestion that we engage with experts on managing serious incidents and disaster situations. We plan to do this, and it will inform our response on both a practical and, as my noble friend rightly points out, a human level.
I turn to Amendment 118F, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox. As set out in Committee, the department already publishes data on the condition of the school estate and is committed to publishing detailed data at school level later this year. We are also collecting updated data through to 2026. I know that the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office take a close interest in how we are improving the condition of the estate.
The condition data collection programme helps us understand the overall and relative condition of schools in order to inform capital funding policy and programmes. However, we recognise that it does not replace the need for local management of risk. To ensure safety, many aspects of school buildings need to be checked in greater detail at appropriate and differing intervals by qualified professionals, including condition, asbestos, fire safety, and structural surveys; as well as regular gas, electrical and water safety checks. These risks need to be assessed and managed on an ongoing basis at local level, taking into account how buildings are used. Therefore, any necessarily incomplete and time-limited assessment of risk carried out at national level would not only place significant burdens on the sector but could be misleading and reduce the focus on ensuring safety and carrying out checks locally, undermining its purpose.
However, we provide more targeted support when broader issues are identified; for example, we ran the asbestos management assurance process to understand its management across schools, and we ran checks to identify and replace cladding of concern on a small number of buildings following the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. More recently, we have prioritised for replacement all known Laingspan and Intergrid design buildings through the school rebuilding programme, as they are coming to the end of their life. Following a successful pilot, we plan to roll out a targeted capital advisers’ programme to increase estate management capability by offering best practice recommendations, tools and improvement support from experienced technical advisers.
Turning to Amendment 104 in the names of my noble friend Lord Moynihan, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Addington, I am delighted to confirm again that on 17 July we announced that defibrillators will be provided at state-funded schools in England over the next academic year. I hope that answers the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about timing. I acknowledge the extraordinary work of the Oliver King Foundation and thank all noble Lords who put their names to the amendment for their tenacity in continuing to make the case for defibrillators so persuasively.
As I said, the first deliveries will take place before the end of this year and will boost the number of defibrillators accessible across England, helping to protect pupils, staff and visitors to schools, and local communities which use school facilities. We will set out further details of the programme later in the autumn term, which will ensure access to this life-saving equipment. I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.