Head slams 'unacceptable' failings plaguing school after pupils arrive to find heating broken AGAIN

A Greater Manchester school is calling for the council to crack down on their landlords after it faced a full heating failure for a second time within a year.

Pupils at Newman Catholic College, whose building is managed by a private company, were left without heating or hot water when they arrived at school yesterday morning (January 22).

The heating failure, thought to be caused by a burst pipe on the roof, is the latest in a slew of maintenance issues the Oldham school says it has faced since 2012. Headteacher, Mr Glyn Potts, called on Oldham Council to take ‘more stringent and impactful action’ against the building’s owner.

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In a public letter to parents, he wrote: “As you will be all too familiar with, this is not the first time that the building has let us down. It is simply unacceptable that one institution remains plagued by so many failings and that a resolution has not yet been reached.

“I shall be writing to the council to raise our concerns and imploring them to take more stringent and impactful action toward the building owner, not just for the incident today but for the entire time that the college has been open.”

The school building in Chadderton is a Private Finance Initiative (PFI), meaning it has control over the management of the building, Mr Potts explained.

“The only route we have available to raise concerns is to contact Oldham Council who is the lead on our behalf,” he said. “The council will do what they can to bring about leverage to improve the building but it's just not enough.”

The heating failure was first discovered at 7am this morning but despite attempts by the building owners to fix the problem, there are still