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Sunak refused to fully fund repairs of England’s crumbling schools, says ex-official (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by C4d@lemmy.world to c/uk_politics

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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 a greater funding priority was to build new free schools, 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.”

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[–] mannycalavera 7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Given the civil service is as leaky as a sieve why is he only just timing this announcement now? 🤔

The former Head Civil Servant had safety concerns but thought keeping it quiet was the correct thing to do? He could have easily leaked this on the basis of safety. It's not like literally every other thing was leaked during that time.

This doesn't excuse Sunak by the way.

[–] Mrkawfee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe because no one cared about it until the media picked up on the story?

[–] mannycalavera 4 points 1 year ago

"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."

Fair enough. Although it sounds like he was deeply concerned about safety.... just not enough to raise anything to the press at the time and only now.

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