How Safe Is My School? BBC Scotland Investigates

When we send our children to school in the morning, what do we expect?

This is a story about how a place that should be one of safety can be

We trust when we drop our children off at school

We don't want them going into buildings that are unsafe.

What happens when every parent's worst nightmare comes true?

You get angry, you get sad and it's just, it's like you've

I've spent the last few months looking into how

and who's benefitting financially from a system few of us understand.

It is really a profit machine, with lots of people making substantial

sums of money out of it. This is a story that starts

with a single wall, But this story goes far wider

and deeper than that. It's about schools across Scotland

and billions of pounds In the early hours of 29th January,

Storm Gertrude swept across the Atlantic and hit

Scotland. By morning the worst was over,

but the damage it had done was just We were getting ready for school one

morning and we had the radio on and said they'd got a text

through to say there's been a bit of storm damage and the school

is closed so I thought, "I'll just drive past the school

and see what's happening," and I actually stopped the car

in the middle of the road Shocked because almost the entire

gable wall of the school had The school was Oxgangs Primary

in South Edinburgh. I've got some photos

here of the day when So this is just what we saw

we arrived at the school. Usually on a windy day it's quite

an exposed site so the wind comes So what we'll do when we get

to the school is you'll usually see a line of people with their backs

tight to the wall, Literally where this rubble is

right now? The entrance to the classroom's kind

of round the corner of that building there, so we just kind of wait

there and then when the school bell goes off they go round the corner

and into the...into the door. These images, taken on the morning

of the collapse by a news photographer, show just how many

bricks fell onto the playground. Only the fact that the accident

happened early in the morning If it had happened during the day,

like I say, there would have been You actually try not to think

about it, cos it's just, you know, So we just kind of put it

to the back of our minds cos it's just something that you can't even

comprehend, what that would be like. Oxgangs was only built in 2005,

as one of 17 new schools across Edinburgh, so the collapse

caught parents completely off guard. The school was closed for a few days

for repairs then parents were reassured the school was safe

and the pupils returned. So life went on as normal

for the next six weeks of school. Then the Mackels enjoyed

the Easter holidays. But just 48 hours before the school

was set to reopen after the break, At 18:58, it says the school's

going to be closed on Monday, Sincere apologies, and then

with the link that we went onto, it basically said, "Please make

contingency child care arrangements Yeah, there was no time

scale at that point. As you can imagine, that meant a mad

scramble to cover childcare. But once the reality sunk in,

they began to wonder if their children had been told

to return to a potentially dangerous school for the six weeks

before the holidays. Knowing what you know now,

how do you feel about the fact It's really distressing,

to be honest. And I think maybe just a bit

of a rush decision to kind I think that has made it very

upsetting for parents. You know, we trust when we drop our

children off at school We don't want them going

into buildings that are unsafe. All parents were told

was that the school had to shut because engineers had

said it wasn't safe. But now the problem

started to spread. Oxgangs was built as part

of a ?360 million package of 17 All of those schools were inspected,

and it quickly emerged there were serious safety

concerns at all of them. In May, this was the scene

at schools across Edinburgh. 17 shut schools meant 7,000 children

being shifted around This is just one of seven day buses

taking thousands of children across the city every morning at 9am. This

has been happening every day for weeks. The logistics are

mind-boggling. And this happened just two weeks

before some of the most These pupils are doing last-minute

revision here at Tynecastle High. They've been bussed across the city

from Craigmount High. Tynecastle had just three days

to prepare for their arrival. We moved 515 of our senior students

to Tynecastle High School. You have doubled the number

of pupils you are You have gone from 500-odd

to about 1,000. How on earth do you overnight

accommodate a doubling Well, we did it within three days

and a lot of hard work. Physically fitting in twice as many

students as usual was a problem. But the most immediate one was that

Senior pupils from Craigmount had exams to sit, but

nowhere to sit them. So you created an exam hall

overnight? And that's tables, chairs,

everything, flooring even? Yes, we had to bring

in flooring to make sure that it was sound-proofed and also

because of the nature of the floor Across the city at the Royal High

School, pupils had to be moved into portacabins

while contractors surveyed What do you need to do now to make

these into cubes? Teachers were faced with a pretty

unappealing prospect. When you first come in to your

new hut and find that actually it is just a hut and 30

chairs and 30 desks, I would imagine their hearts sank

because most of my subjects who are homeless are the practical

subjects, you know CDT, art, home economics, computing,

those that really need quite It's hard to ignore the fact that,

here at the Royal High, the old building is open and it's

the newer extension which is shut. The new building was too dangerous

for the children to occupy. Your pupils and staff have

been using a building Yeah, I mean, that's

a difficult one to accept. I mean, obviously

as their headteacher, I'm responsible for all these young

people, all 1,260. They're mine, my staff as well,

and I do feel that, you know, it's quite a difficult one to take,

that we've been working in a building where potentially

something awful could happen. I would like answers

as to why that has happened We should be able to trust

that the buildings we have our young people in are safe, sound

and the very best for them. She's not the only one

who wants answers. After all, 17 relatively new schools

have been found to be unsafe. This school is just over a decade

old, and when that wall fell down, So you can understand why parents

want to know exactly The council told parents

that these were cavity walls, and that issues with wall ties

and header ties might have But for most people - me included -

that's little more than jargon. So it's time for me to have a crash

course in cavity wall building. Walls were. -- work. I'll do a quick

sketch of how they go together. You have the skeleton and it supports

the floor is that we stand on. That is a steel column, steel beams, and

these support the roof up here and the floor here. We have to clad this

skeleton to keep the wind out and to keep us warm. If I was to do a quick

section, if you could cut through the building and look that way, what

you would see is the inner leaf, but of concrete, insulation, and the

outer leaf, which fell down, in brick. These are held together with

wall ties. These hold this outer leaf together onto the inner leaf.

The skeleton makes it stand up and these are the clothes and part of

them fell off. Back in Edinburgh, I needed to see

what I could find out So I went right back

to the beginning. I got hold of the plans filed

with the Council to get We have got our hands on some

documents relating to ox gangs primary. They are very detailed and

technical and we are hoping there are answers in here but we will need

some help. Professor Alan Dunlop

is a leading architect. I asked him to help us make sense

of the drawings we got And, crucially, what would they tell

us about the wall and header ties the council had already said

were at least part of the problem. You can clearly see the steelwork

which forms the main body You can also quite, quite clearly

see the outer leaf of brickwork You can see the cavity space

in between but there is no evidence on the detailed drawings of a wall

tie or a header tie that I can see which would connect it

back to the steelwork. So there's no wall ties

in these drawings at all? I can't see, and I'm looking

at the specification. I can't see evidence or a detailed

direction or evidence of a wall I'd at least expect to see

the specification to actually refer directly to a wall tie or give

a reference to it but I can't see Wall ties are mentioned just once

in supporting notes. It's possible they appeared

on other drawings. Correctly fitting ties

when you build a cavity wall If you have a steel-frame building,

or a concrete-frame building that's clad in brickwork,

and the brickwork is so thin, as is shown within these detailed

drawings, you have to, through the wall tie,

connect it to the inner leaf of blockwork and you have to,

through the header tie, connect it to the main

part of the structure It's not even necessarily

architecture. So if something so basic has gone

wrong, who can tell us They're Local Authority schools,

so is it the council? These are PFI, or Private

Finance Initiative schools, which means the buildings are built

and run by private companies. To help explain, we've

enlisted the help of some The council signed a contract

with these guys to build the schools Together they are called

the Edinburgh Schools Every month, the council pays

the ESP to provide those We need to see how we can sort this

out. So, obviously, the Edinburgh Schools

Partnership went to the top They've hired this PR firm to deal

with media enquiries but when we asked to interview

someone, they told us there wasn't one single person who

could answer questions. Surely there must be

someone taking responsibility. Let's face it - they built and now

run council schools, Just a few streets away,

there's a company called They've been hired by

the partnership to carry out the running of the schools

on a day-to-day basis. One of their staff is the key

contact who has been in and out of the council offices trying

to fix the mess. IML are more than

managers or factors. They have a director on the board

of the Schools Partnership, responsible for hundreds of millions

of pounds of public money. Our interview request

to IML was also refused. I was beginning to feel like no-one

was willing to explain It has been a challenge to get

people to talk about what was going on behind the scenes but one man was

prepared to talk. Donald Anderson, leader

of the council at the time. Donald Anderson was the man

who signed the deal to spend over What we were setting about trying

to achieve was, and still is, the biggest investment that's ever

taken place in public So when the wall came down

at Oxgangs and another 16 schools were found to be potentially

dangerous, what were your thoughts? Well, I think my thoughts

were the same as everybody else's What has been clearly demonstrated

by what's taken place is that there were a series of very

serious construction faults in these schools,

and that needs to be accounted for. I think we all agree

the construction faults need There are detailed inspection

reports but the council and the ESP won't release them ahead

of an independent inquiry into the schools crisis,

which should report in December. So we'll have to try our best

to find out ourselves. We retrieved the best images

we could of the collapsed wall They said this was no substitute

for a detailed on the What we can tell from

the photographs is that the method of failure would appear

that the wind suction has managed to pull the building,

the external leaf of brick, away from this point here,

and ripping it down in that fashion, leaving this section of brickwork,

which is now hanging and, as you say, it would be

in an unsafe state. So clearly that would obviously have

to be removed to be made safe. And what kind of weight of bricks

have come off this wall? For a very rough estimate,

because, again, from a photograph it's difficult to tell the exact

size of it and such like, but you would be looking

at about 1.5 tonnes, between one and 1.5 tonnes,

metric tonnes of brickwork. Right, so a serious weight

that could do damage? I mean, if that landed

on somebody standing there, Well, most likely

lead to a fatality. So let's start with the wall ties,

the metal parts you can Were they doing what they're meant

to do - holding the parts Some of the wall ties,

although there's a number of them and they are regularly spaced,

some of them appear short so that For instance, this one here looks

as though it can come That distance left over really

is about the size of the cavity Now, it doesn't look as though

it's actually done that. Not to say it hasn't done it,

it could have broken They're quite slight

and slender, these ties. They might have broken

off, but that's... Again, if I was carrying out

a serious investigation on this, that would be something I would be

actually looking at. And there's evidence some wall ties

and the header ties, designed to connect the outer wall

to the frame of the building, Just judging from the photographs

that we actually see at the moment, there doesn't appear to be a wall

tie connecting the inner leaf of blockwork through the insulation

and through the cavity to the outer leaf of blockwork above

this level. That's not to say they weren't

there and they were knocked down There doesn't appear to be anything

connecting the brickwork The steel is actually

holding the roof up, it's a steel building, it's not

a brick and block building, right? There doesn't seem to anything

connecting to that. So, on the basis of just looking

at images, there seem to be problems with how many wall ties

are in place, whether they are properly attached,

and a question about whether the header ties securing

the top of the wall to the rest But as defects had been found at not

one but 17 schools in Edinburgh, to what extent could the problem be

affecting schools elsewhere? We sent Freedom of Information

requests to every council in Scotland, asking about structural

faults in the past five years. And we found problems

like Oxgangs elsewhere. At St Ninian's in East Renfrewshire,

engineers found these wall ties weren't properly

embedded because the joints The council ended up paying more

than ?750,000 to fix Two walls collapsed

in South Lanarkshire, fortunately during the school

holidays, here at A further 58 wall ties needed to be

added to another eight schools When a wall collapsed

at Lourdes Primary in Glasgow, the problems were, once again,

wall and header ties. And at Balfron High

in Stirlingshire, the school was forced to close

to repair similar defects. The images from St Ninian's High

School in East Renfrewshire show badly fitted wall ties that don't

reach across the cavity and join up Although the council discovered

the problems in 2010, they didn't tell parents about them

as they decided the defects weren't This is the first time these images

have been made public and, although the problems were discussed

at a public council meeting in 2013, the existence of wall tie problems

here was not realised more widely. This is from a school

in East Renfrewshire this time. From these reports and the evidence

you can see, what's your I would suggest that it not only

contravenes what would be standard practice, in my view,

this is malpractice. The way some of these things

are done is very worrying indeed and I'm also concerned and shocked

that this is something that happened in 2010 and we don't know anything

at all about it. A wall built like this,

here's the key question, If you have a wall,

if you have an external leaf of brickwork and there's no evidence

of it being connected, in the way following, for instance,

the British Standards, to the underleaf of brickwork,

blockwork, and there's no evidence of any connection to the steelwork

then I would suggest it's And the thing that's also worrying

about a situation like this is this also looks as though there's

a parallel between what happened in this school, as far

as the construction of it, with what happened in Oxgangs,

and that's a very kind of serious thing and,

if it's happened, if under Freedom of Information you've

managed to get this, I'm beginning to wonder where else

is it actually being constructed So is there something about how

we're building schools, and other public buildings,

that might make Well, there was something,

and it has to do with who is really In olden days and I go back,

clients where there was much more traditional contracts where the end

user, be that the council or otherwise, was actually

the client and he employed the design team who would involve

an architect, a structural engineer a building services engineer

and a quantity surveyor who is the man who looks

after the money. The contracts have changed

and morphed radically over the years, until we have systems

like the PFI system where the view is taken that this consortium

will deliver the goods in accordance with these on trust to the client

so the client has no control over the design team or has no,

or no longer employs people In a way he deems that that

saves him money and it passes Yes, but then he opens himself

to the risk that the contractor who is checking himself is telling

the truth and has done So - back in Edinburgh -

who was actually responsible for making sure these schools

were built to be safe? To help us out we've

called on our Edinburgh But they are built by a consortium

of people who bring money, facilities management and,

crucially At Oxgangs that lead

construction firm back in 2005 the ESP takes on the

responsibility for designing If the Council is handing out

work it could choose to have its own eyes

and ears on the site. This is often through

a Clerk Of Works. Their job is to inspect the build

as it goes on and make sure But there wasn't one on the 17

school builds and the Council haven't been able to show us any

evidence anyone else inspected So I made contact with

an experienced clerk of works. He was worried about how speaking

to me might affect his employment. So his words are

spoken by an actor. I am very concerned that such

an occurrence is even possible As an experienced Clerk

of Works I am appalled to read that the construction

process used involved self-certification of work and that

no Council Construction Inspector In these days of tight budgetary

controls and a diminishing supply of skilled labour, this is totally

reckless and irresponsible. So the Council can't

reassure parents that anyone inspected this wall,

as it was built, on its behalf. We've established other

councils did have clerks So was it a failure

on the Edinburgh's part? You did not have a clerk of works

on site who may well have I think that's a fair

comment to make. At the time and for a long time

in the public sector, there has been a series whereby

responsibility for carrying out the inspection regime falls

on the contractor and, and that has been the case

for a number of years. It was about transferring risk

to the private sector for these buildings so that, rather than build

a school and then walk away from it, companies who actually did that

looked after the building for 30 years and made sure it was properly

maintained. And that's a risk that lies

with the council, that doesn't... Well the council has that issue

in all of its estate. The council's looking

at a ?45 million backlog in terms of the rest of its school

estate at the moment. It's hoping to spend

?20 million a year on improving That risk to the children

and to the children's education No, the risk for looking

after the buildings was transferred to the private sector

so that they bore responsibility for putting any problems right

so that was transferred, and that's exactly what's

happening at the moment. They are paying to restore

the schools to their The buildings failed and that

failed the children. It's the children who are paying for

this really through their education. That's true in this particular

instance but that would also be true if these had been funded

in the conventional means. Are we any closer to knowing

who is responsible for Edinburgh's Even the man who led

the Council when the deal was signed admits mistakes

were made. Later we'll take a closer look

at the other major players - the construction firms who built

the wall. But across Edinburgh I met up

with a parent who knows just how Abbie Wallis's daughter left

for the day at Liberton High A few hours later the school phoned

Abbie saying Keane had been hurt. The lady sounded serious

on the phone and I thought she's And then I drove down to the school

and a paramedic passed me and in my head I was saying,

don't turn left, don't turn left. And he drove past the school and I

thought "phew" and then as I got nearer to the school he done

a U-turn in the road and drove into the school and then I saw

all the emergency services and I got stopped at the gate,

asking if I was Abbie Wallis. Keane had been changing before gym

when a wall collapsed on top of her. By the time she had been recovered

from under the rubble, she had died. It wasn't until just after probably

10.30 that they told me. I don't know if it sunk

in at the time or, I just, I did ask to be with her

but they said I wasn't allowed at that point,

I wasn't allowed to see her I would have felt better I think

if I could have just held her hand So the last time I saw her

was when I dropped her off at school at about 8.20 or

something that morning. Every day I go over the events

of April 1st thinking what could have been done

or what should have been And you get angry, you get

sad and it's just... Every road you drive down there's

a memory and always... and then watching all the children

go to school and see how they've changed and it makes you wonder

what would she look like. They've changed so much in two

years, it makes me wonder what would she be like now in those

two years, now. When you lose a daughter

it can be really hard Abbie has now decided to speak out

because two years later she's still waiting to hear

whether anyone will face I feel stuck back two

years ago until I know accountable, I feel,

and I did expect something It's really hard to

get past it just now. Who do you feel is responsible

for Keane's death? I don't really want

to say who I, until... I don't

want to point fingers. I have my own feelings

about who's accountable. I know it wasn't malicious

or anything but at the end of the day I took my daughter

to school believing that she was safe there

and that she would be looked after, Abbie and Keane's brother made this

video after her death. It shows a cheeky, energetic girl

who lost her life in a place When the wall at Oxgangs came down

Abbie was thrust back into the dark place she's

struggled to escape When I first read about it, I just,

my heart just sank really. But then I was relieved

that nobody was injured because it could have been,

it could have been awful. Could have been a lot worse and then

I just felt angry and then I was pleased that they were looking

into it, all these But just mainly relief

that nobody was hurt. Meeting you, in a way, what that

does is makes me realise that when we talk about buildings

being potentially unsafe, I wouldn't have

expected schools to be, any building really,

I just wouldn't... expect them to be in that state,

left in that state whether they're It doesn't bear thinking

about really what, I'd hate for another family

to be in our position. Liberton High School

was an old school, not a PFI one. And the internal wall that killed

Keane was not built in the same way But Abbie is struggling to get

answers about what happened to Keane, just as parents

at Edinburgh's PFI schools are left with important questions

about safety. We asked all Scotland's councils

what they did after Keane's death. 27 dangerous free-standing walls

in schools had to be demolished. In North Lanarkshire, two free

standing walls were found to be In Glasgow, it took them more

than six months after finding a wall with major cracks in

it, to take it down. A further 35 walls around

the country had to be repaired. Schools are really the only safe

place I felt for the children. Like, I'd drop them off at school

and get on with my day in my head It's not like when they're out

playing or maybe at friends and you didn't know

what was going on. And it's the one time that

you could switch off The last place that you'd ever

expect something bad to happen. And on the other side of Edinburgh,

Oxgangs families are aware of how close they came to being

In Abbie's position. It has been upsetting cos there have

been other instances within Edinburgh schools

where children have been And I think there was a thorough

check at that time so that's just upsetting that things didn't come

to light earlier really. It's been a very lucky escape,

definitely, of which we're obviously Our investigation of what had

happened at the PFI schools had uncovered concerns

about whether the Council had What about the people

who actually built the wall? Since the wall clearly

failed, are the people The Edinburgh Schools Partnership

included a builder - But on big design and build jobs

much of the day to day worked is farmed out to smaller

subcontractors. We've been told there

was a brick and blockwork Until now no-one has been able

to get to the sub-contractor A farm on the southern

outskirts of Glasgow. This farm used to host the offices

of a firm called VB Contracts - We managed to track down a former

senior employee and he confirmed that his company did build

the walls at Oxgangs. Our source didn't

want to be identified. But there were a couple of

interesting things he could tell us. First that there was a lot of time

pressure on the jobs. Second, that there was possibly

something unusual about the build. Remember our structural engineer's

diagram of the wall? Well, there's the internal blockwork

and there's the outside skin other source said Harold Miller told

the two build it first and then the outer layer of bricks.

That's not the way it's usually done.

Normally the inner layer of blockwork - the grey blocks here -

and the outer of layer of brickwork - the part that fell off at Oxgangs

- are put up section by section at the same time.

That allows the builder to make sure the two parts are properly connected

But we're being told that's not what happened here.

In my view view that's at the root of the problem at Oxgangs.

It certainly would not be standard practice and I would expect that,

I mean I could understand why the contractor would want to do that

for instance, because that means that the inside of the building can

be wind and water tight so the trades that are involved

in plasterers and plumbing and heating engineers

and the electricians can work within a dry environment.

But if you're going to do that, I would expect a method statement

It's not something you do for instance ad hoc.

And you have to do it properly and you have to specify the right

Could that have been done at Oxgangs?

In the evidence of the photographs that we have seen, that doesn't look

to be the proper wall tie that you would actually use

If a wall has been built the way that contractors

told us they built it, is it safe?

Well, the evidence is clear in the Oxgangs project.

The wall collapsed and evidently it doesn't look as though

And again that's another shocking and worrying aspect

Our investigation has come a long way.

We have a potential explanation for the collapse.

An independent inquiry now under way will perhaps reveal more.

But we had some big questions for the company that built

the school - Miller Construction Limited.

Miller Construction, that built the wall at Oxgangs,

It was bought by another Construction Firm -

They told us they had contractual responsibility for the school

Over the course of our investigation we submitted over 30 detailed

questions and allegations to Galliford Try relating

Other than confirming they had taken over Miller's responsibilities

Galliford Try's priority has been to ensure the children

return to their studies at the earliest opportunity.

We worked tirelessly with the City of Edinburgh Council

and Edinburgh Schools Partnership in order to achieve this.

So where does that leave us with who's accountable?

Galliford Try won't answer any questions about the build.

And The Edinburgh schools partnership - the company in charge

- says it won't speculate ahead of the inquiry.

So when it comes to what went wrong and why, we haven't had a single

answer from any one of the companies potentially answerable for the safe

So far this had been a pretty strange journey in many ways.

But things are about to take an odder turn.

Meet Dexter Whitfield - a man who has devoted two decades

to working out where the money goes in PFI deals

And it's like a jigsaw where there's lots of great holes and where,

and if you're not you know, my attitude, if I'm not certain,

or that information is hazy, or the source is questionable

or whatever, it doesn't go in and it's built

up meticulously, like a labour of love,

from basic corporate information and information that I source

What Dexter is looking for is evidence about

And he's established that the Edinburgh Schools Partnership

is a constantly shifting cast of characters.

The the Edinburgh Schools Project, the PP1 project, my analysis shows

that that has been bought, elements of that equity

project have been bought 13 different times since 2001.

What that means is that companies are buying and selling their stakes

And it's ended up with our schools being owned

Well basically if you look at the Edinburgh Schools Project,

it's owned by four different companies.

Those four different companies are located offshore

in Guernsey and Jersey, and they, they are basically

The 17 schools here in Edinburgh in the project

are to the private sector a financial commodity

So the Edinburgh Schools Partnership is currently owned by four anonymous

sounding investment funds - all based offshore.

Dexter Whitfield's analysis has revealed that the majority

of Scotland's PFI schools are now at least partially owned offshore

Ownership by what are called nominee companies makes it almost impossible

to find out who the investors - arguably the real owners -

But we've managed to dig out one curious little detail.

When you think about Sweden you probably don't think

about PFI schools - you probably think

The Third National Swedish Pension Fund - which funds state Pensions

in the country - owns a stake in Palio 19 - which in turn is one

of the funds owning the Edinburgh Schools Partnership.

are going to secure the financial future of Sweden's pensioners.

schools have become commodities and quite why the Third

Swedish pension fund is investing in that is you know, is open

to question but clearly they, they haven't done it

because they love Edinburgh schools or parents or think Edinburgh

teachers are good or because it's a good investment.

They do it because they think that's a profitable way of

None of the original investors in the Edinburgh Schools Partnership

One - Amey - sold out before all the schools were even finished.

It was part of a bundle of deals that delivered

the equivalent of a 45% annual profit.

The Edinburgh Schools Project has proven to be very

What's the attraction of schools to infrastructure funds like these?

I wanted to get an investor's eye view.

And it turns out the attractive part to institutional investors isn't

the risky build phase - but the 20 or 30 years where the Council pays

So what makes them attractive to investors?

I suppose investors see quite a stable return from these.

Typically contracts under these PFIs run

It's a defined cash return they're going to get from them so you might

expect sort of 4.5% per annum and that 4.5% would rise in line

with inflation so that is a better return than cash.

And effectively they will be state-backed, the money

Exactly, so some of the risk has been taken out of it

because the Government is backing these initiatives.

It's low risk - but Laura Lambie says investors will only get

involved if they have the right to sell their shares on.

So the attractiveness for a secondary market in something

like these infrastructure projects is that somebody who invests

at the start doesn't actually have to hold onto that investment

It's very much more attractive if at some point throughout that

contract they can sell it onto somebody else,

so that's really the attractiveness in the secondary

It makes this share is more attractive because you are not being

curtailed withholding the investment for 20 or 30 years.

Any investment is about risk versus reward.

So I need to understand better how the taxpayer fares in all this.

On the plus side - children get new schools, built and run

On the down side, public bodies are committed to massive payments

And a recent analysis by Dexter Whitfield showed the five

biggest infrastructure funds - including two invested

in Edinburgh Schools - effectively paid no tax on collective profits

The whole PFI machine really is really a profit machine or wealth

machine if you like, and that there are an awful

very substantial sums of money out of it and which have

got nothing to do with, they're of no benefit

to Edinburgh schools, teachers and parents and whatever.

Is a situation where one investor can make a profit of over 40% -

on a deal that involved Edinburgh schools and other public buildings -

40% rate of return is a very high rate of return, there's

That's a very high profit but what you've got to look

at in terms of the way that the council provided that

service was what happens to the project over

But does it sound like value for money?

Given what's happened, a wall has fallen down, does that

Well, we did a comparison, we did a comparison in terms

of value for money between public procurement and private procurement

and it came out showing that this method provided us

Profits aside - can the council really have a relationship with

the Edinburgh Schools Partnership if it's a shifting group

The whole thing is so opaque that it's incredibly difficult to find

And that also ultimately leads to questions about accountability.

Does the city of Edinburgh really have control over the schools?

And ultimately as that, those schools become even more

financialised and are owned increasingly by, become a monopoly

in terms of who actually owns them, then that is you know,

that's a direct loss of accountability.

Does it really matter who owns our PFI schools?

Is Dexter Whitfield right that democratic control

When I met the Council's Chief Executive he said

he was unable to answer questions about construction

But we did talk about whether PFI reduced accountability.

When you went into a relationship with the Edinburgh Schools

Partnership it was envisaged it was a 30 year relationship,

that was with construction experts, facility management

You now have a contract with the Edinburgh School Partnerships

that has been bought and sold 13 times, its owners

Is that something that sits comfortably with you?

As long as we have a contractual relationship that ties them down

to the contract to do the right thing by the schools and make

sure our pupils have still got schools and that they're safe

and that they are in good condition, then that's something that was

Our job is to make sure we manage that contract going forward

I think people might be surprised to find out that this

is something that's now, this contract with the Edinburgh

Schools Partnership is now something that has become a financial

commodity when that seems so far removed from the running

of the schools and the day to day interaction of pupils

The history of PFI has, right across the country, has been

about trying to find the right way to finance large

scale construction of, usually, public buildings.

Where there has been a fault in that, an inherent fault in that,

again is something we need to look at.

It's common, it's not just Edinburgh that has these

And the ins and outs of PFI contracts will be looked

at by the Independent Enquiry in our case.

And there's new evidence that all isn't well between

the Edinburgh Schools Partnership and the original investors

It appears there's something else going on behind the scenes.

Court documents show that Amey and Miller were successfully sued

by a subcontractor for not paying them any profit for building

And it now turns out that the Edinburgh Schools

Partnership are suing all of the contractors that formed

They were due here at the Court of Session today but the case

So we still don't know if they are quarrelling over

the issues that have come to light or something else that

But we've found evidence of problems across the country.

We've been able to find potential explanations for the defects that

Finding anyone who will take responsibility for the failings

All the Edinburgh schools are now repaired.

But the crisis might totally change the way we do big

There are certain projects that are just

so important for us as a society that you can't

And especially in my view schools because as I say you're,

you're saying to the young people and the children who are occupying

the building that you're so important to us that we're taking

special care in designing a building which is absolutely fit

It's a world of the classroom and then there's a world out

here of the financial market where the building of that class,

the classroom is located in is being traded like goods and chattels.

The Government who is responsible for releasing contracts on behalf

of the tax-payer needs to look very very closely at the type of contract

and why they're releasing these contracts in the methods

What do they believe they'll gain out of that contract?

Because it doesn't appear to have been safety and it doesn't appear

And surely to God in public buildings in today's age

In Oxgangs there's been months of uncertainty but as the summer

ends their school should be the safest in the country.

Families are back in the school routine - but their faith

It seems to be the private sector that's the real winner

and it seems that the Edinburgh tax payer is the one that's losing out.

I think it still feels that nobody has really been held

happened and putting so many children's lives at risk, really.

It seems to be a faceless company with international

It does make you question decisions that are made on behalf

of the people of Scotland and who we trust to make

Hello, I'm Alex Bushill with your 90-second update.