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<p>It is the responsibility of those who run schools - academy trusts, local authorities
and voluntary-aided school bodies - to manage the safety and maintenance of their
schools and to alert the department if there is a serious concern with a building.
It has always been the case that where the department is made aware a building may
pose an immediate risk, immediate action is taken.</p><p>The department will spend
what it takes to keep children safe. The department will fund emergency mitigation
work needed to make buildings safe, including installing alternative classroom space
where necessary.</p><p>The department will fund refurbishment projects, or rebuilding
projects where these are needed, to remove RAAC from the school estate. Schools and
colleges will either be offered capital grants or rebuilding projects where these
are needed, including through the School Rebuilding Programme. The department will
set out further details for affected schools and colleges in due course.</p><p>The
department will carefully consider claims submitted by responsible bodies for essential
RAAC related works, taking into account the particular circumstances of each case.</p><p>The
department recognises that some responsible bodies will already have carried out emergency
mitigation works, where RAAC was deemed ‘critical,’ based on the advice of the department’s
surveys or from other qualified professionals, and in most cases we will reimburse
these costs.</p><p>Prior to 31 August 2023, the point at which the department’s advice
on the risks of RAAC changed, some responsible bodies or schools may also have chosen
to take action on RAAC in their buildings where it wasn’t deemed critical, and others
may have chosen to go further and removed RAAC entirely. In these cases, as with any
other capital works, the responsible bodies will have taken decisions as part of their
own estate strategy, based on their assessment of any professional advice they'd received
and the affordability of the project.</p><p>This work would typically have been funded
through annual capital funding provided by the department to the sector, or from other
sources of funding, such as a responsible body’s reserves. In these cases, the department
is not providing additional funding to the funding the responsible bodies will have
used to pay for the work.</p><p>In addition to the department’s support on RAAC, the
department has committed £1.8 billion of capital funding for the 2023/24 financial
year to improve the condition of school buildings, as part of over £15 billion allocated
since 2015. Alongside this, the department will transform poor condition buildings
at 500 schools and sixth form colleges over the coming decade through the School Rebuilding
Programme.</p><p>The department will always put the safety and wellbeing of children
and staff in schools and colleges at the heart of its policy decisions. The government
has taken more proactive action to identify and mitigate RAAC in education settings
than the devolved administrations in the UK, or indeed, governments overseas.</p>
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