00:00 Well, we've been very proactive in dealing with RAC since 2018.
00:03 We've issued a warning notice to schools then with the local government association.
00:06 We issued guidance in 2021 and 2022.
00:10 And in 2022, we started a survey of all the schools in the school,
00:15 say 22,500 schools, asking whether they have RAC in the schools.
00:20 Those surveys have been coming back and the vast majority do not have RAC.
00:24 And those that thought they had RAC, we sent in surveyors to identify,
00:28 to confirm whether they did. And again, the majority did not.
00:31 And where we did identify it, we then took action if the RAC was critical.
00:36 And that's been happening already in 2022, 2023.
00:39 In 52 schools, we've already taken remedial action for those schools.
00:44 What we discovered over the summer, as new evidence emerged,
00:48 there was a number of cases where in schools,
00:51 but also in non-schools and indeed outside England,
00:55 where RAC that we thought was safe,
00:58 that was not critical in its condition, actually turned out to be unsafe.
01:03 Because of that emerging evidence over the summer,
01:06 we've changed our guidance to school to say that it's no longer just RAC
01:10 that's in a critical condition where you have to take that building
01:14 or room out of use.
01:15 We now take the cautious approach that if the RAC,
01:19 when you've identified RAC, regardless of its condition,
01:22 you need to take that building or room out of use.
01:25 And that is a cautious approach in terms of safety.
01:27 And the reason why we can take this decision, because this government,
01:31 unlike any other government in the world, has more evidence
01:34 of where RAC lies and remains in our school because of the work
01:37 we've been doing over the last few years.
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