Eye-watering sum each person in UK will have to pay to fix schools and hospitals

Crumbling schools, hospitals and prisons will cost nearly £50billion to put right, a damning report has found.

Years of neglect mean taxpayers face rocketing bills for crucial repairs, the National Audit Office(NAO) warns. It found there have been 5,400 cases where poor quality buildings have impacted patients since 2019.

The watchdog said Chancellor must tackle the maintenance backlog in the Government's next spending review, and agree long-term funding to repair crumbling buildings Ministers were warned that people working in affected buildings are being put at risk.

It will cost more than £10billion to repair schools, and a similar sum for and properties, numbercrunchers estimate. The repairs would cost each person in the UK £710, analysts found.

NAO head Gareth Davies said: "Allowing large maintenance backlogs to build up at the buildings used to deliver essential public services is a false economy. Government needs better data on the condition of its operational assets and should use it to plan efficient maintenance programmes to deliver better services and value for money."

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The Government last night insisted it was taking "immediate action" to address the issues caused by "long-term underinvestment". The watchdog warned that data on Government-owned buildings is "incomplete, out of dates" - meaning that the true cost of repairs could be even higher.

The NAO said there are 136,844 buildings owned by central Government, worth around £158billion. It cost £22billion to operate these properties in 2020-21.

Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who chairs the Commons' Public Accounts Committee, said the crumbling estate is "putting the safety of those who work in and use these public services at risk". He added: "It is alarming that more than 5,000 clinical incidents each year are caused by disrepair across the NHS estate.

"Government's poor data means it lacks a clear picture of the true state of affairs across the public sector. With the maintenance backlog estimated to have reached at least £49 billion, Government must urgently break the cycle of short-term thinking, dither and delay, which only leads to spiralling future costs."

A Government spokesman said: "We are taking immediate action to remedy the state of disrepair found across the public estate, which is the result of long-term underinvestment in maintenance and upkeep.

"As part of this, we are already investing billions of pounds to deliver critical repairs and rebuild our public services, to tackle maintenance backlogs and improve our , schools and prisons as we deliver on the plan for change."

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