BLAZE FEARS OVER 25 SCOTS SCHOOLS
TWENTY-FIVE PFI schools in Scotland were built without proper measures to prevent fires spreading.
It’s been revealed that many of the schools have safety walls which are not high enough and holes in ceilings that would allow a blaze to spread.
Problems have been found in Edinburgh, Aberdeenshire and Dumfries and Galloway after all Scots councils were approached for details of school fire surveys.
Issues breaching legal requirements were identified at 25, with most of the problems stemming from when they were built.
Critics of the private-public partnership scheme say builders were left to “mark their own homework” at schools.
And council chiefs admit they had no legal right to force them to make changes. Niall Rowan, chief executive of trade body the Association for Specialist Fire Protection, said the tragedy at Grenfell Tower in London had put new focus on the dangers.
He said: “These safety measures can quite literally be the difference between life and death.” The issue of fire prevention came to the fore in the independent inquiry into unsafe walls at 17 PFI schools in Edinburgh last year.
The inquiry lead, Professor John Cole, flagged up fire safety issues in the capital.
The city’s council said a programme of remedial work is now under way and the schools will be made completely safe.
Aberdeenshire Council released a report from August 2016 which outlined 251 fire safety issues at six PFI schools.
The school with the biggest problem was Portlethen Academy with 11 major issues among 87 defects.
There are 350 privately financed schools in Scotland.
Falkirk Council have admitted that in their first batch of nine PFI schools, they were unable to intervene to make sure building standards were being followed.
The local authority said in a letter to MSPs on Holyrood’s education committee: “There was no obligation on the part of the contractors to take action”.
This position was mirrored in Perth and Kinross, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire.