Past Labour governments must also share the blame for crumbling schools - Yorkshire Post Letters

I wonder how long the Department for Education has known about the weaknesses in the construction of some schools built in the 1960s and 70s using a reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (The Yorkshire Post, September 1 2023).

I appreciate that surveying the strength capabilities of this material is carried out by qualified concrete engineers which takes time to carry out.

The problems are that children will have to be relocated to neighbouring schools which have the capacity to accommodate them and it looks like repairs to these buildings and hiring in of portacabins (temporary buildings) will come out of existing school and local authority education department budgets unless this government does a common sense U-turn and allocate additional funding from government reserves?

The sad part is that children's education will be disrupted again after the loss of tuition during Covid.

It is interesting to note that a lot of this construction was done under Harold Wilson's Labour government during his two terms of office, October 1964 to June 1970 and again between 1974 to 1976.

One of his three Education secretaries, Reginald Prentice, was driving through the Houses of Parliament reforms for 'Comprehensive Education reorganisation' which identified the need for more schools to be built and to save costs using materials like reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete but it has a limited lifespan than normal specification concrete.

In hindsight this was short sighted by the Labour government and Labour local authority, Bradford City Council as the maintenance requirements will be greater than using a normal British standard grade of reinforced concrete.

It is of equal concern that these materials were used on the construction of hospitals, one being Airedale hospital which now needs to be reconstructed.

The current Labour government under Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves will not take any responsibility for the past failures of Harold Wilson's government and as usual will blame this government.