Balfour warned over Scots school closure

Balfour Beatty has been warned not to repeat its “unacceptable” performance on the £50m East Lothian Schools PPP, or it could face financial penalties.

Helen Alexander, head teacher at Ross High School, one of six schools involved in the new build/refurbishment contract, had to send home all the campus’s 800 pupils earlier this month due to disruption from noise, dust and mud caused by works on site. Similar problems have been recorded at other schools.

In a letter to parents, Alexander said: “Due to the ongoing, unacceptable environment, both inside and outside the building, I have decided to close the school until further notice.”

Although the school was only closed for a day, industrial cleaners had to be used to clear up the mess caused by workers.

Following a recent meeting with the council, Balfour has now been told that another instance of a school closing due to poor refurbishment work might see the contractor penalised financially.

An East Lothian Council spokesman told CJ: “The problems, due in part to the recent bad weather, were not anticipated. We have spoken to Balfour about the situation as we wanted to take the approach of discussing the concerns in the first instance, rather than hand out penalties.

“However, we are quite within our contractual rights to impose penalties. We would rather take a positive role and have asked Balfour to put proper monitoring processes in place
to try and anticipate further problems.”

Balfour countered that the cleaning of the schools was the responsibility of a subcontracted firm.

But the council claims that any work-related dirt was the responsibility of Balfour until the facilities management component starts up after the work is completed.

The spokesman also refused to rule out imposing other penalties on the contractor when work finishes next year after he revealed that several of the high schools involved in the contract opened late this term as Balfour was forced to play catch-up on work.

Balfour took on the contract following the collapse of Ballast’s UK division last year, which resulted in around 10 subcontractors being owed £5m.

One of them, Richard Edward Construction, was forced into liquidation at the end of last year with debts of £433,000.

A Balfour statement said that the contractor continues to work with the council to “ensure that disruption of any nature is minimised, thereby allowing the schools to deliver the curriculum as normal”.