Many years ago I used to work in Oxgangs in Edinburgh. This
is at the centre of the current scandal of faulty school buildings
built under a PFI contract within the last 10 years. The current popular narrative is that the PFI
(public Finance initiative) contract is in some way the cause of the faulty
construction.
It is a narrative that suits people on both sides of our
political system. The Left despise PFI because they see it as a infection from
the Right. The Right use PFI as a
whipping boy because it was widely used under New Labour.
The history of PFI is of course that it was designed and
began to be used under John Major, probably as a response to the fact that many
public sector buildings were in a state of disrepair after years of
underfinancing, and that it was embraced by New Labour, in a major rebuilding
spree to renew services.
The current narrative is that PFI is the problem. I cannot
help thinking that this is simplistic. To me PFI looks more like a symptom.
The voting public want good services. They do not want to pay more tax. Taxing
intentions are a prominent part of any election campaign. The political parties
are united in allowing the voting public to believe that they can have the services they want
without the pain of having to pay for them.
This fundamental dishonesty means that the government of the
day – of whichever complexion, has to resort to magical thinking and magical
accountancy. PFI is part of that.
Another interesting question raised by the current scandal
in Edinburgh is “did faulty construction begin with PFI?” I think the answer to
this is definitively “No!”
I spent some years working in another part of Edinburgh in the
70s and 80s. As a welfare services
officer in the housing department in Wester Hailes I was frequently called out
after fires in the stairways of the densely packed modern flats of this estate.
These fires it was ultimately discovered
were caused because the construction firm that built the flats had substituted a
lower grade of plastic for the flame resistant grade specified by the architects.
Kids who enjoyed a good fire discovered that the plastic to the drying greens
could easily be ignited by a cigarette lighter. The fires were a major contributory
factor to a modern estate quickly becoming an area where no one would choose to
live. The desire to light fires is
probably down to cramming thousands of flats into an area where 100s would be a
better fit. We wanted a cheap solution,
and that is what we got. The fires are
apparently still
an issue today.
Down the road in Hailesland there used to be a group of
multi storey flats, built in the 60s. These are no more, The problem was that
the heavy concrete cladding that formed the exterior skin of the building
started to fall off. On investigation it
was found that the steel clips which should connect the panels to the building
structure did not always fit. The
builders improvised. The panels eventually fell off and all the residents had
to be moved out and the flats were knocked
down.
I happen to know about these events in Edinburgh, but I
would be astonished if similar things have not been happening for a very long
time in many parts of the country.
It is right to feel concern about the quality of buildings
built with public money, but let us be realistic. If we want services that work
well, and help people live good productive lives then it is necessary to pay
for them. If we see options that promise to give us the services on the cheap
then we should probably make the effort to read the small print. There is
probably a catch.
