Glasgow City Council ‘proactive removal’ of dangerous RAAC concrete from Glasgow schools as one secondary school identified

Glasgow’s council is planning the “proactive removal” of a potentially dangerous type of concrete from a city secondary school.

Councils were asked to check whether reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) had been used in the construction of schools by the Scottish Government in July.

Last week, over 100 schools and colleges in England were closed following the discovery of RAAC, with a beam in one school collapsing.

Glasgow City Council confirmed RAAC was identified at Whitehill Secondary in 2021, and that checks are ongoing in other buildings.

At a full council meeting, Bailie Patricia Ferguson, Labour, asked Cllr Christina Cannon, SNP, the city’s education convener, for an update on the surveying of schools.

She asked for a commitment to complete any required repairs as quickly as possible.

In a written response, Cllr Cannon said the council has “advised our PPP (Public Private Partnership) partner that we would like to set up a team to discuss and agree a strategy for proactive removal and replacement of the RAAC panels”.

It is intended to “cause minimal disruption to the operation, learning and teaching in the school”. “The council have already made communication with staff at the school and parents to make them aware of this,” Cllr Cannon added.

The council has said “significant steps” were put in place to monitor the condition of RAAC at Whitehill Secondary, which shares a campus with Golfhill Primary, and detailed inspections have “shown no evidence of defects that could affect the integrity of the material”.

Council officials are working with the Scottish Government to review buildings, and following guidance issued by the Institute of Structural Engineers.

There is a four-stage process to identify RAAC in Glasgow, beginning with a desktop survey. At stage two, schools that can’t be eliminated from the search under stage one are tabulated and efforts to locate original design information will be made.

Stage three involves a visual inspection of any buildings which can’t be eliminated from the process while stage four “may require to have more intrusive testing undertaken”.

A council spokesman previously said the process had eliminated “the vast majority of establishments across the city”.