Clarity on use of RAAC in court buildings but unanswered questions remain

Last year, several courts had to close due to the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) which.

The Government provided a list of eight court buildings containing RAAC. It was subsequently reported that Harrow Crown Court was excluded from a survey in 2021-22 because it was constructed in the 1990s.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Ministry of Justice has now confirmed the dates of construction of the eight court buildings concerned which demonstrates that Harrow Crown Court appears to have been an outlier:

• Doncaster Justice Centre North – Completed 1969;
• Barnstaple Magistrates’ Court – Completed 1970;
• Blackpool County Court – Completed 1970;
• Blackpool Magistrates’ Court – Completed 1970;
• Preston Magistrates’ Court – Completed 1971;
• Bradford and Keighley Magistrates’ Court – Completed 1972;
• Liverpool Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts – Completed 1983; and
• Harrow Crown Court – Completed 1991 and opened for operational use on 26 February 1992.

The line after which owners of buildings may safely rule out RAAC remains unclear and imprecise. Previous reporting from CROSS Safety indicated its use in a hospital building as late as 1998. Failures of the material in the 1990s reportedly led to demolition of some buildings containing it, but clearly some remained in various building types across the UK.

As we have previously addressed, RAAC continues to be identified in a small number of homes, including in a particularly unfortunate and widespread case in Aberdeen.  In England, the Regulator of Social Housing has previously confirmed that it does not believe it is a widespread problem in social housing.

Owners of buildings, and particularly those responsible for dwellings, should be taking steps, if they have not done so, to check whether there is the risk of presence of RAAC in their buildings and take appropriate and proportionate action based on technical expert advice.

Problems beset legal claims to recover losses arising from the use of RAAC, and many insurance policies may not respond. These avenues should still be explored cost-effectively to reduce exposure to the costs of making buildings safe, most critically where people live in them, but any building used by people for any purpose may be affected. The scale of use of RAAC in office buildings, periodically mooted as a source of converted new homes to meet housing demand, remains an unknown.