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More than 1.5 million children are studying in dilapidated school buildings, a Guardian investigation has found, with years of underinvestment leaving England’s public infrastructure in a crumbling state.
A study of public sector building conditions, including hospitals, schools and courts, has found thousands are in need of urgent repair, with conditions so bad in many that they are endangering the lives of those who visit and work in them.
One school in Cumbria had to be evacuated because inspectors found the floor could collapse at any moment. At a hospital in Sutton, the Guardian found masking tape holding windows in place and mud seeping through the floor.
The investigation combines data from multiple government departments for the first time, and has prompted calls for ministers to spend hundreds of millions of pounds more to carry out immediate improvements.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative chair of the cross-party public accounts committee, said: “Our committee has long warned of the short-term thinking and decision-making in government that has inexorably led to the miasma of rot rising over our public realm.
“Some of our nation’s hospitals are in a desperate state, with props having to be used to hold up floors – some of which cannot even bear the weight of patients needing treatment.”
He added: “Proper maintenance of public buildings cannot continue to be seen as a non-urgent matter of leaky roofs and draughty rooms. Far from an abstract issue, these are problems of the gravest concern that can cause snowballing additional costs.”
Ministers have blamed the previous government for underspending on Britain’s public buildings for years, with departments regularly having raided their capital budgets to help pay for day-to-day spending.
A government spokesperson said: “We are taking immediate action to remedy the state of disrepair found in our public estate, which has been neglected over the previous years.”
Experts say poor project management has also contributed to the problem, with several departments failing to spend the money they have been allocated for building maintenance.
Nick Davies, a programme director at the Institute for Government, said: “The UK has a decades-long history of underinvesting in public sector buildings, but the 2010s saw deep cuts to already limited budgets. Departments have also regularly underspent their capital allocations, raided them to cover shortfalls in day-to-day spending and rushed money out of the door in the last month of the financial year.
“The result is record maintenance backlogs and an unmodernised estate that makes it much harder for frontline staff to do their jobs and for the public to receive the support they need.”
The Guardian investigation pulled together data for the first time from the Department for Education, the courts service, prison regulators, the NHS and the Department for Work and Pensions.
It found that one in six schoolchildren were studying in schools that either needed major work or were in a relatively poor condition. Almost half of those were in schools that the government or regulatory body has deemed to be unsafe or ageing and in need of major refurbishment.
The findings suggest the problems identified by the previous government with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which led to the closure of more than 100 school buildings last year, are merely the tip of the iceberg.
The problem was worst in the Midlands, where 30% of schools were found to be either unsafe, ageing or blighted by a large number of defects relative to their size.
Meanwhile, there are signs that government schemes to rectify the problem are struggling to do so. The school rebuilding programme, launched in 2022 with a target of 50 schools a year, had completed work on just 24 schools by the end of September.
In the NHS, departmental data showed a third of sites in England required repairs to prevent major disruption to clinical services, serious injury or prosecution. More than two-thirds needed remediation to prevent the regulator taking action.
Figures from NHS England showed the bill to make its estate fit for purpose had more than trebled from £4.5bn in 2012-13 to £13.8bn last year. Nearly £3bn of those problems needing repair are regarded as “high risk” because they pose an ongoing danger to people being treated, working in or visiting hospitals and clinics.
The Guardian analysed regulatory reports for more than 100 prisons in England and Wales and found that more than a fifth mentioned serious maintenance issues, dilapidated or poor building conditions or inhumane environments for prisoners in their latest visit. Almost 20,000 prisoners were being held in one of these prisons as of October this year.
In the courts system, internal government modelling obtained by the Guardian showed just 1% of court buildings in England were considered to be in a good condition as of 31 October.
How the Guardian analysed the condition of public buildings
ShowThe Guardian analysis classified schools into four categories. Those that had been nominated for the school rebuilding programme were considered to be in the highest need of rebuilding. That was followed by those with a school condition allocation band of M-Y, those with band G-L, and finally those below band G were considered to be in above average condition. These groupings were based on work done by the National Audit Office in 2023, as well as Department for Education guidance detailing that G was the average band.
Court data was obtained via Freedom of Information release from the Ministry of Justice. The ‘condition’ rating assigned to each court was an internal government methodology utilising desktop analysis to apply broad condition categorisation, based on the condition of all mechanical & electrical equipment at each court. This data was produced by facilities management providers from a survey of the estate’s assets carried out in 2020. The result was then adjusted using more recent data, including the DEC or EPC rating of a building or any facilities management related occurrences.
Prisons were graded based on the contents of their most recent Independent Monitoring Board Report. "Serious issues" meant the inspectors reported "inhumane" conditions, units which were unfit for habitation or dilapidated, rat or mouse infestations, mould, flooding or legionella. Prisons were deemed to have “some issues” if they reported more minor issues such as boiler failures, damp or mould, or leaks. Otherwise they were given a default grade of “satisfactory”.
Health data was taken from NHS England Estates Returns Information Collection, and other departmental condition data was obtained via a Freedom of Information release to the Cabinet Office.
The condition of England’s courtrooms is having an impact on the justice system. Ministry of Justice figures showed 202 crown court trials had to be rescheduled on the day because of equipment or accommodation failures between 2020 and 2023, compared with just 90 in the four years preceding the pandemic.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced in the budget in October that she was changing the government’s fiscal rules to allow her to borrow more for capital spending. She is now under pressure to use the spending review in June to announce significant rises in Whitehall capital budgets.
Davies said: “There is no quick fix to these problems but the Labour government made a positive start in the budget by increasing capital budgets for 2025-26. Significant further investment and improvements to how this money is spent are required in the spending review if meaningfully progress is to be made over the course of this parliament.”
