Eye-watering sum each person in UK will have to pay to fix schools and hospitals
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Crumbling schools, hospitals and prisons will cost nearly £50billion to put right, a damning report has found. Years of neglect mean taxpayers face rocketing bills for crucial repairs, the National Audit Office(NAO) warns. It found there have been 5,400 cases where poor quality buildings have impacted patients since 2019.
The watchdog said Chancellor Rachel Reeves must tackle the maintenance backlog in the Government's next spending review, and agree long-term funding to repair crumbling buildings Ministers were warned that people working in affected buildings are being put at risk.
It will cost more than £10billion to repair schools, and a similar sum for NHS and Ministry of Defence properties, numbercrunchers estimate. The repairs would cost each person in the UK £710, analysts found. NAO head Gareth Davies said: "Allowing large maintenance backlogs to build up at the buildings used to deliver essential public services is a false economy. Government needs better data on the condition of its operational assets and should use it to plan efficient maintenance programmes to deliver better services and value for money.".
The Government last night insisted it was taking "immediate action" to address the issues caused by "long-term underinvestment". The watchdog warned that data on Government-owned buildings is "incomplete, out of dates" - meaning that the true cost of repairs could be even higher.
