A Green candidate for the Scottish elections has hit out angrily at breaking news that 17 Edinburgh schools and a community centre are to stay closed on Monday rather than re-opening after the school holidays.
Only yesterday (7 April), the City Council had said that all schools would re-open on Monday 11 April. However, it now says that, as of Friday evening (8 April) it cannot get assurances from the consortium which manages the PPP schools that the schools are safe.
Andy Wightman, Scottish Green MSP candidate for Lothian, said:
“This is absolutely staggering. As of Monday thousands of children and young people are going to be thrown into confusion and their families into deep anxiety because the private consortium which built and runs those ‘PPP’ schools cannot guarantee pupil safety.
“It’s well known that Edinburgh has a school repair problem, but it was believed to be in those schools which were decades old. It is an utter disgrace to discover that new schools are beset by the same problems, as a result of shoddy workmanship.
“A full scale inquiry is needed into this fiasco, first and foremost for the schools immediately affected, but also, more generally for this whole set of arrangements for building and maintaining public buildings.”
Andy Wightman’s blog on school closures: https://www.edinburghgreens.org.uk/blog/after-the-storm/