17 Edinburgh city schools closed due to construction concerns

17 Edinburgh schools remain closed due to fears around the safety of their construction, affecting 9,000 pupils.

Edinburgh Schools Partnership (ESP) could not provide safety assurances, leading to the closure of a neighbourhood centre, five high schools, ten primary schools and two special schools, due to concerns over their construction. Parents are still awaiting news from Edinburgh Council.

A review of all public private partnership contracts in Scotland have been called for by Scotland’s largest teaching union head, after 9,000 pupils in the capital are unable to return to school after the Easter break due to safety concerns.

The 17 schools were part of a £36M deal between the council and a private finance consortium, under the Public Private Partnership scheme.

The schools, all built under the same PPP1 contract were closed after construction workers repairing serious structural issues at one Oxgangs Primary found “further serious defects” with the building on Friday. These defects were related to an absence of header ties in the steel structure, so were in addition to the original concerns over external walls – part of which blew down in January.

The General Secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Larry Flanagan said: “The EIS welcomes that the safety of pupils and staff is being treated as a priority, while recognising that these short-notice closures will be highly inconvenient for pupils and parents.

“However, we must also question how such significant defaults could escape normal building control scrutiny and we believe it is now necessary for an urgent review of all PPP/PFI contracts, including the terms of the private maintenance contracts which are often both expensive and extremely restrictive.”

In a bid to help, Edinburgh University and local churches are offering their facilities, with alternative arrangements for the schools being “actively looked into”.

 

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