Four more city schools found to have building defects, MSPs hear

Defects have been found at four more Edinburgh schools in an inspection instigated after 17 schools were temporarily closed due to safety fears following a wall collapse.

The further flaws were highlighted to MSPs as Edinburgh City Council’s head of property and facilities management Peter Watton said the local authority “got it wrong”.

MSPs also heard pressure on contractors meant corners appeared to have been deliberately cut in schools built through public-private partnership (PPP) schemes.

Edinburgh City Council said the defects at Currie, Towerbank and Crammond primary schools and Valley Park Community Centre are being fixed in the summer while those at Queensferry High School have already been dealt with.

They were discovered through the local authority’s city-wide building investigation sparked after around nine tons of masonry collapsed at Oxgangs Primary School in January 2016.

Initial investigations in schools built as part of the same PPP scheme found ties needed to connect the walls to steel beams had not been used in some cases, leaving them unstable in heavy winds.

The city council temporarily shut 17 schools after operator Edinburgh Schools Partnership said it was unable to provide safety assurances for the properties.

Questioned on the PPP deal at Holyrood’s Education Committee, Mr Watton said: “I’m absolutely 100% prepared to admit that, at that time, the council got it wrong.”

Committee convener James Dornan said: “That’s not getting it wrong, that’s fundamentally missing the whole point of what you were there to do.”

Questioned if PPP contractors had cut corners deliberately, Mr Whatton’s counterpart at Aberdeenshire Council, Allan Whyte, said: “It would appear so, yes.”