A school in Dover, Kent has recently reopened following a new expansion after it was covered in asbestos, was crammed with too many pupils and began to slip down the hillside that it was built on 91 years ago.
The new facilities, built at a cost of £25.5 million had their formal opening in September after the construction which began in June 2020 was completed. This new set of buildings can take up to 900 pupils and include carpentry workshops, food technology rooms, elaborates, a sports hall and art rooms.
The chairman......
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Across the last ten years Cumbria City Council have paid out more than £300,000 to school staff in compensation following injuries sustained at the workplace.
Since 2012 the council have settled a total of 29 claims which include staff receiving compensation for slips, falls and assaults by their own pupils.
Teachers have also received pay-outs as a result of asbestos exposure from the school buildings. During the 2018/19 school year, one worker was paid over £200,000 due to a claim they made in 2006 after exposure to the deadly material years before......
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The UK Government have been urged to take on the growing problem of England’s faltering school buildings. Figures detailed by the Guardian have revealed that of 20,000 school buildings surveyed between 2017 and 2019, 19,442 had a minimum of one element with “major defects” or “not operating as intended” with repairs and replacements clearly needed.
The National Education Union (NEU) said the numbers being reported were “shocking” and shared their belief that the £1bn the government are putting into what they called “state of the art” refurbishments to 61 schools was......
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The Commons Work and Pensions Committee have now held their first meeting on the affect asbestos has had on teachers and pupils in UK schools, we covered the idea behind these meetings in our blog from last week which you can read about here.
At the meeting Charles Pickles, founder of campaign group Airtight on Asbestos, gave the commons a stark warning that because of asbestos-related illnesses 200 to 300 children are having the lives shortened “just as a result of going to school”. Fervent campaigner Mr Pickles also......
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This month a committee of MPs have started to investigate the dangers faced by UK hospital staff as well as teachers and pupils in schools across the country from potential asbestos exposure. This comes after warnings from campaign groups that the current measures are not enough to curb these preventable deaths linked to the dangerous substance.
Between the years 2001 and 2016 it has been reported that 305 teachers have died from Mesothelioma however, according to campaign group Airtight on Asbestos, the real number is likely to be higher. The group’s......
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Education unions have been warning of the potential danger pupils and teachers at Welsh schools could be facing due inconsistent monitoring of asbestos in their buildings.
This comes after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request put forward by BBC Wales has shown that over 900 schools in the country contain some level of asbestos. The majority of these are inspected at regular intervals however there are some surveys released that are 10 years old and with the asbestos marked as suspected rather than known.
This isn’t the first time this year that......
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In England, teachers have been making their complaints known about schools not being up to scratch with leaking ceilings, heating systems that no longer work and the potential danger of Covid with ventilation systems that aren’t fit to deal with the threat of the contagious disease.
The declining state of UK schools and the potential dangers relating to asbestos is something we have covered in our blogs over recent years. With the government being urged to combat these issues (read here), an example of a school in......
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This week the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson made a statement pledging to invest £1bn across 50 major school building projects with a further £560m for repairs to crumbling infrastructure. This does however follow the National Audit Office identifying at least £6.7bn in repairs and fixes needed across the 21,000 schools in England, almost seven times the government pledge.
In the UK there are 3,000 schools designed in the late 1950s that are known as Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme (CLASP) schools, these were previously very popular models that used light......
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Last September, as many university students were about to start a new academic year, a Freedom of Information request filed by Stephensons Solicitors LLP to 106 universities in England, revealed the just how many of these institutions contained asbestos.
From the 91 universities that responded to the FOI request, 74% contain asbestos in the fabric of their buildings and 86% contain asbestos on their grounds.
The results of this enquiry led to Stephensons injury team calling on all universities to sufficiently inform students and staff about the hazardous material if it is......
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Major lack of standards and regulations put students and teachers in danger of asbestos exposure.
According to The Joint Union Asbestos Committee (JUAC) almost 90% of schools contain asbestos, amplifying death rates for those working in these environments. The evidence shows that on a yearly basis 17 school employees die due to mesothelioma cancer.
Furthermore, the JUAC reveals that 1,863 academies in the UK contain asbestos. The dangerous substance is being continually uncovered, often found under the carpet, in ceilings and pipes – of these academies only 54 had been reported as of early......
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