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Thursday, February 09, 2017

Capitalism's Gamble

The report on the shoddy construction of schools in Edinburgh which led to the closure of 17 as they were unsafe and required to be fixed has been released and , surprise-surprise, the cause was the council and the builders cost-cutting. The fact that no injuries or fatalities to children resulted from the collapse of the gable wall at Oxgangs School was a matter of timing and luck. Approximately nine tonnes of masonry fell on an area where children could easily have been standing or passing through.

  The report explains that City of Edinburgh Council could have employed someone, for example a Clerk of Works, to oversee the work on site. This costs money.

Keeping costs down is one of the factors that appears often in the report. It says "the procurers of buildings need to consider whether the drive for faster, lower cost construction may be being achieved to the detriment of its quality and safety".

One of the senior staff at VB Contracts who built the walls at Oxgangs, and others, has previously said they were told to build the walls in a way that is not considered good practice.  The report explains that the architects spotted the way the walls were being built at one school and highlighted it to the main contractor who, they say, ignored it.

PPP was the private finance model used to fund the schools. The report says that aspects of the way the private finance model was put in place put the quality of the buildings at risk.
 Larry Flanagan, EIS General Secretary, said: "This is not an area where corners or costs should ever be cut. The legacy of the PPP/PFI funding model is too many inferior buildings, for which we will all be paying a vastly inflated price for decades to come. Scotland's pupils and school staff and, indeed, Scottish taxpayers deserve far better."

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