Dedication – To who else but Mr Alan Dransfield.
Other books by this author
The “Vexatious? Moi?” series:
Book 1: Harcourt Street and Vale View Primary School
Book 2: Padden Brook
Book 3: The Bent Bypass (the A555/SEMMMS Manchester Airport Relief Road)
Book 4: Sandringham Road
Book 5: Offerton Precinct
Book 6: Marple Money (the Marple Active Communities Hub)
Book 7: The Wall of Silence — How Stockport Council Blocks the Questions It Doesn’t Want to Answer
Book 8: The Foggbrook Files
Book 9: Arms Length — The Story of Stockport’s Own Companies
Book 10: For Hire — The Consultants Councils Can’t Refuse
Book 11: The Price of Civic Duty — How Stockport Council Spent While It Cut
Book 12: Paying The Piper: Stockport’s MPs And The Price Of Public Money
Book 13: Lessons In Privacy. How Stockport Grammar School Learned To Ask For Forgiveness Rather Than Permission
Book 14: Three Floors Or Four. Aquinas College, Nangreave Road. The Development No-One Living Opposite Asked For.
Book 15: Extra Large. Tesco, Tiviot Way, Portwood. The store that was built bigger than agreed, and the committee that said no.
Vexatious? Moi? Book 16: Traffic vs. Bins. Eleven Flats, No Parking Spaces, and The Hatherlow Sunday School Planning Story.
And, outside the series:
Learning Law From a Lawless Council (Stockport) — the Michael Parnell case
Contents
A note on method
1. The label
2. Six schools and one contract
3. The water, 2013
4. Windows, heat and a High Court claim
5. The file nobody seems to hold
6. After Edinburgh
7. The money, and the contractor
8. Letters to an MP
9. What remains unanswered
Appendix A. The ledger
Appendix B. Documents still needed
Appendix C. Left out, and why
Sources
A note on method
Mr Dransfield’s blog holds well over seventy posts on PFI schools. Most are emails he sent to his MP, to councils, to Ofsted and to the contractor, and links to news reports he thought relevant. This book reads them as a record of questions.
For each question the book gives three things: the date it was asked, the reason it was reasonable to ask, and an independent source for that reason, such as a trade report, a regulator’s letter, a court judgment or the contractor’s own letter. It says nothing about outcomes unless the outcome is publicly known. It does not repeat accusations that the documents do not support, and Appendix C lists what was left out and why.
That discipline costs some of the heat in the original emails. It is also what makes the argument hold. The courts asked whether a request had a serious purpose when it was made. A book that answers with documents is answering the right question.
1. The label
In 2010 Mr Dransfield asked Devon County Council for the design drawings and lightning protection test results for a footbridge at the Exeter Chiefs rugby ground. The council refused the request as vexatious. The Information Commissioner appealed a First-tier Tribunal decision to the Upper Tribunal, which in 2012 found the request vexatious. In 2015 the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal. That decision, Dransfield v Information Commissioner and Devon County Council, is now the leading authority on vexatious requests.
The Upper Tribunal set out four broad themes for deciding whether a request is vexatious: the burden on the authority, the motive of the requester, any harassment of or distress to staff, and the value or serious purpose of the request. The Court of Appeal approved that approach and added that the question is whether the request is vexatious, not whether the person is. As the Court reported it, the request itself was precise and politely worded. The decision turned on the history of earlier requests.
What this book does not do
It does not re-argue those rulings. They concerned one request in 2010. This book looks at what came after: the questions Mr Dransfield put to councils, regulators, a contractor and an MP about six PFI schools in Exeter and about similar schools elsewhere. The test applied is the one the law applies to a request: did the question have a serious purpose when it was asked?
The answer is documented, question by question. In several cases the councils, the contractor or the press themselves later confirmed the problem he had asked about.
2. Six schools and one contract
Devon County Council lists the Exeter PFI schools as Isca, St James’, St Luke’s, St Peter’s, West Exe and Wynstream. They were built under a single contract with Modern Schools (Exeter) Ltd, a company set up for the project. Carillion built the schools, having acquired the original contractor, Mowlem. Trade reports put the contract at about £315 million over thirty years. Sodexo won a five-year facilities management contract worth about £4 million a year. A 2013 Building Design report gives earlier names for two of the schools, Bradley Rowe Primary and Priory High, and these need reconciling with the current names before publication.
How a PFI school is paid for
A 2002 guide for school governors, written for the union UNISON by David Rowland and Professor Allyson Pollock of University College London, explains the model. A private consortium sets up a special purpose vehicle to design, build and run the school. The public body pays it a single “unitary charge” over twenty-five to thirty-five years. The guide says the parent companies are not financially liable if the scheme fails, and that lenders are normally protected if a contract is terminated. It argues that the risk transferred to the private sector is often smaller in practice than in the business case. Those are the authors’ views, and a union commissioned the guide, so the book presents them as such. They do explain why questions about who pays, and who holds the records, are not idle ones.
Why a safety file matters
Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994, the regime in force when the schools were built, a health and safety file is compiled at the end of a project. As far as the guidance shows, it records how the building was constructed and what is needed to maintain and, eventually, demolish it safely. Mr Dransfield’s central request, from 2015 onwards, was for the as-built file for each school.
Devon’s own letter, April 2010
A letter from Devon County Council’s County Health and Safety Manager, dated April 2010 and sent to headteachers, governors and managers of council buildings, says that recent visits had found statutory inspections not carried out in some premises because of confusion over who was responsible for arranging them. In some cases the inspections had been done but no records were held on the premises. The letter tells managers to record every inspection and keep a copy on site.
Limits. The letter is about council premises generally. It does not mention the six PFI schools or the bridge, and the list of inspections it refers to was not in the copy seen. Its value is the date. It was written about six weeks before his May 2010 request, and shows the council itself recognised the question of whether inspection records exist.
3. The water, 2013
Mr Dransfield’s first run of questions concerned drinking water. The sequence is documented from several independent sources.
May 2013: bottled water
In May 2013 a local newspaper reported that pupils at the Exeter PFI schools had been given bottled water amid contamination concerns. Mr Dransfield asked what dangers the children had been exposed to and how much the bottled water was costing. He also wrote to Ofsted’s whistleblowing team asking it to revisit his earlier complaints, and to his MP. Both were questions a parent or governor could have asked.
31 August 2013: five questions to the contractor
On 31 August he wrote to the chief executive of Carillion asking for an account of recent plumbing works at the six schools. He asked five things: the full cost; why the work was necessary; who paid; whether all six schools were affected; and what happened to the scrap copper pipes. This is the clearest example in the blog of a short, specific, civil request. Each question has an obvious purpose: cost, cause, responsibility, scope and disposal of materials.
2 September 2013: the BBC report
Two days later a BBC South West investigation reported that a company employee had tried to cover up a test result for iron in the water supply at St Peter’s school. It said the reading was almost ten times the legal limit and had been deliberately reduced. The programme made its own findings, and the book can rely on it as a published report.
26 September 2013: Carillion writes to the MP
Carillion’s own letter to Mr Bradshaw, dated 26 September 2013, is the strongest document in this chapter. It says that a metals test result had been falsified before it was provided to Modern Schools (Exeter) and to Devon County Council, that the person responsible no longer worked for the company, and that the reason for the falsification was a matter of conjecture. It acknowledges recent issues with water quality. It says water restrictions at West Exe Technology College, covering toilets, classrooms and kitchens, had been lifted at the start of term after several months. It describes remedial work to ensure all mains-supplied drinking water outlets were free of metal contamination, with independent testing by South West Water’s laboratory.
A contractor does not write in those terms about a question that has no basis.
11 December 2013: nickel
A second Carillion letter to the MP, dated 11 December 2013, reports nickel leaching from chrome-plated fittings above the legal maximum in some models of fitting. It says one drinking water location at St Peter’s then had an elevated reading, that the school had withdrawn all its fountains from use against the advice of Carillion and the council’s advisers, and that a three-stage assurance programme would finish with final testing in the first quarter of 2014. Mr Dransfield had asked in October why testing was still under way at the school despite Carillion’s earlier assurance. That question was answered by the second letter.
What the letters do not say. They do not say the water was “unsafe” or “unfit for purpose”, and they do not say the problem began in 2005. Later emails in the blog speak of contamination for seven, eight or ten years. None of the documents seen supports a duration. The supportable statement is narrower and still serious: in 2013 the contractor acknowledged falsified and above-limit metals results at the schools and a nickel problem in fittings.
A natural next step is a request to Devon County Council and Exeter City Council’s environmental health team for the water quality and Legionella testing records for the six schools. The book does not guess what they would show.
4. Windows, heat and a High Court claim
In October 2013, Mr Dransfield posted a Building Design report that explains why he kept asking about the buildings themselves. It reported that Carillion had begun a claim of about £893,000 plus interest against the architect and an engineer over the windows at the six schools. As reported, the schools were built between 2005 and 2008. The windows were designed to meet the building regulations’ rule on opening area, but not the separate requirements on ventilation and overheating. Carillion said it had done remedial work, including new windows and skylights. The architect said the claim was unfounded.
The book can report that claim as an allegation in a public court case. It cannot report the outcome, because none was seen, and it should not present the claim as vindication. It concerns heat and ventilation, not water or safety files. What it shows is that the contractor and its professional team were in open dispute about defects at these buildings, and that a member of the public asking about their condition was asking about something real.
He asked about it repeatedly: in October and December 2013, and in April 2016, when he asked his MP for the status of the case.
The June 2007 meeting
In October 2013 Mr Dransfield wrote to his MP that minutes of a meeting on 8 June 2007, which the MP attended with the council and school heads, recorded heating and ventilation problems. If the minutes show that, his questions about the same issues predated the litigation by years. The minutes have not been seen. They are the first document the author should seek.
Who pays for defects
On who pays, Devon County Council has said in responses to information requests that under the PFI contract the cost of rectifying defects is met by the contractor. Mr Dransfield asked “who paid” for remedial works in March 2014, on a news report of a school closing early for water safety work. The answer in general terms is Devon’s own statement. What applied to that particular work has not been seen.
5. The file nobody seems to hold
By 2015 Mr Dransfield’s requests had narrowed to one document: the as-built health and safety file.
April 2015: two schools, two answers
On 26 April 2015 he asked Isca College for its as-built file and its lightning risk assessment. The school replied that the request should go to the council, and a day later wrote that the documents were not held at the school but “between” the council and the PFI contractor. The following day he made a similar request to Chudleigh Primary School after Devon had referred him to it. Chudleigh’s business manager replied that as-built files are held by whoever commissioned the building, which she took to be the county council. Chudleigh is not one of the six PFI schools, and the book must say so.
The effect is circular. The council sent him to the school, and the school sent him back to the council or the contractor. A question about who holds a safety record is a reasonable one, and these exchanges show why he found it hard to answer.
March 2015: Ofsted
On 23 March 2015 Ofsted answered his request for any reports on welfare and safety at the six schools. It holds none, and said building health and safety is outside its remit. The same letter records that he had been writing to Ofsted about these schools since March 2011. The request was answered in full and nothing in the reply treats it as vexatious.
May 2016: the St Luke’s file
By May 2016 Mr Dransfield held the as-built file for St Luke’s school. He told his MP that it quoted the 1994 regulations, said the council had appointed Mowlem as planning supervisor, and did not mention wall ties or mechanical and electrical systems. The next day he listed four things he said it lacked: mechanical and electrical information, specific specifications, a completion certificate, and any reference to testing, including lightning protection.
A point of care. The guidance suggests a health and safety file chiefly holds as-built drawings, information on plant and equipment, and maintenance information. Completion certificates and test certificates are normally held elsewhere, and the file should not be confused with the operation and maintenance manual. The honest framing is therefore narrower than his emails. The gap in mechanical and electrical information is worth checking against the code of practice. The other three items are better put as separate questions to building control and the maintenance contractor.
In April 2016, he wrote that until he saw the as-built files for each of the six schools he would not stop. It is the plainest statement of purpose in the blog, and the documents above explain it.
6. After Edinburgh
Between 2015 and 2017 other councils’ schools gave Mr Dransfield’s questions an independent footing.
Knowsley and Merseyside, 2015–2016
In June 2015 the trade press reported that a kitchen fire at Knowsley Park school had led to surveys of all eight PFI schools built by Balfour Beatty in Knowsley, and that fire protection problems had been found across them. Knowsley Council confirmed similar issues and agreed a programme of work with the fire service. Reports also said that fire dampers had been installed where they could not be checked or maintained.
In January 2016 Mr Dransfield wrote to his MP, citing a Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority report as quoted on a local blog. It described a fire at a PFI school in January 2015, fire separation concerns, and a number of other PFI sites needing attention. He asked the MP to put the question to Devon. The report should be obtained at source before the book relies on it.
On 16 April 2016 he made an FOI request to Knowsley Council for the as-built files of the eight Balfour Beatty schools. The request went to the right authority and was narrow, and its purpose was plain: the council had itself acknowledged fireproofing defects across that estate.
Edinburgh, 2016–2017
In January 2016 a wall collapsed at Oxgangs Primary in Edinburgh. In April seventeen Edinburgh PFI schools were closed for checks. Press reports described missing wall ties, including header ties, and the defects were investigated by an independent inquiry under Professor John Cole, which reported on 9 February 2017. It found poor record keeping by both the council and the project company and inadequate fire protection. The builder was Miller Construction.
On 13 April 2016, within days of the first reports of missing ties, Mr Dransfield told his MP that his main theory was that wall and steel ties had been left out at the failed schools. He asked who had approved and signed off the construction, which the Cole inquiry later examined as supervision and quality assurance. On 11 February 2017, two days after the Cole report, he wrote to the Speaker and the MP asking for escalation.
Do not stretch the Edinburgh findings to Exeter. The Cole report concerned Edinburgh. It did not find fraud, and it said nothing about the six Devon schools. What Edinburgh supplies is a reason, in 2016, to ask whether any PFI school’s records were in order.
Leicester, July 2016
On 9 July 2016 he asked Leicester City Council for an internal review of a request for the as-built files of four schools. He said he had been sent pre-construction documents instead. Miller Construction was the main contractor for those four schools, the same firm that built Edinburgh’s. Pre-construction information and the as-built file are different documents, so the question is a proper one. Two of the four schools reached financial close only in 2012, so the dates he quotes cannot apply to every school and need checking school by school.
South Bank, 2016–2017
Construction Enquirer reported in July 2016 that Carillion would demolish and rebuild South Bank Primary, near Middlesbrough, at its own cost after cracking caused by defective fill under the foundations. Mowlem had built it, and the other four schools in that scheme were reported as problem-free. In March 2017 Mr Dransfield wrote to Carillion’s chief executive and to his MP proposing health and safety audits of all Mowlem-built schools, and requested the as-built file for the school. The cause was specific to the site, so his proposal was a request for assurance, not a finding that other Mowlem schools were unsafe. The book should say so.
7. The money, and the contractor
Some of Mr Dransfield’s questions were about public money, and one of them has a verifiable answer.
In February 2015 he told his MP that Devon’s published listing of payments over £500 showed payments to Modern Schools of the best part of a million pounds a month. A reported £315 million contract over thirty years works out at about £875,000 a month, so the figure is the right size. The actual payments should be checked against the council’s published listing.
In October 2014 he asked his MP who pays if a PFI contractor goes bankrupt, naming Carillion and Balfour Beatty and asking whether PFI contracts are ring-fenced. The 2002 UNISON guide had described the structure: the project company is separate, and the public body’s obligation to pay for the building survives a termination. In January 2018 Carillion went into compulsory liquidation. He had asked the question more than three years earlier, as a matter of public money and risk, and there was nothing contentious about it. How the Exeter schools fared afterwards has not been seen, and the book makes no claim about it.
In March 2017 he asked how Sodexo could be paid under a contract that covered three schools funded directly by central government. Sodexo’s own announcement of the five-year contract confirms the scale. As Sodexo describes it, the contract sits within the PFI project company, not directly with the county council, so the question should name the project company as the payer. Which three schools are academies needs confirming.
8. Letters to an MP
The blog’s largest category is the correspondence with Mr Bradshaw, then MP for Exeter, with more than fifty posts. This is where critics will look, and the book should look there first.
What the best letters look like
The email of 2 June 2014 is polite, specific and a follow-up to something the MP himself had done. It reminds him he had written to Devon about health and safety at the six schools and promises to forward Devon’s reply. The email of 16 April 2016 asks for the status of two named matters and contains no insult. In April 2016 he added that he did not want to be thought vexatious. The book can quote that once, as evidence that he knew the label was being used against him.
The tone problem
Many emails are not like that. They use phrases such as “kicking doors down”, accuse named bodies of fraud and cover-up, and in one case speak of body bags. Those lines are opinion or abuse. They add nothing to the case for a serious purpose, and they bear on the courts’ test of harassment and distress. A reader who finds them elsewhere will think less of the book if it pretends they are absent.
The book’s position is simple. It quotes the questions and the documents, notes the rhetoric where it matters, and does not defend it. It says that the volume of letters to an MP is a fair thing for critics to count, and shows that each message, taken on its own, asked something specific.
9. What remains unanswered
The questions below can be put as fresh, narrow requests. They are the book’s open ends, and the answers would turn assertions into evidence. The book makes no claim about what the answers will be.
• Devon County Council and the project company: the as-built health and safety files for each of the six schools, or confirmation of which body holds them.
• Devon County Council: the water quality and Legionella testing records for the six schools, 2005 to date, and the correspondence with Carillion about the 2013 falsified result.
• Exeter City Council building control: the dates of completion certificates for each of the six schools.
• Devon County Council: the minutes of the meeting of 8 June 2007 on heating and ventilation.
• Devon County Council: the outcome of the Carillion claim over the windows, and any remedial cost borne by the council.
• Devon County Council: the 2009 document on lightning risk assessments for schools, and any assessments carried out.
• Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council: the as-built file and any remedial or demolition report for South Bank Primary.
• Knowsley Council and Leicester City Council: replies to the 2016 requests, if any were issued.
If a body does not answer within twenty working days, the sequence is an internal review, then a complaint to the Information Commissioner. A documented non-response is itself a fact the book can report, without accusation.
Appendix A. The ledger
Entries are in date order. “Status” records what the independent source supports. No outcomes are recorded unless publicly known.
| Date | Question or document | Why it was reasonable | Independent source | Status |
| Apr 2010 | Devon County Council letter on missed statutory inspections | Council recognised records were not always held on site | The letter | Supported |
| May 2013 | Bottled water given to pupils: what dangers, and what cost? | Local press report of bottled water at the schools | This is Exeter | Supported |
| 19 May 2013 | Asked Ofsted whistleblowing team to revisit complaints | Same report | Ofsted’s later reply (Mar 2015) | Supported |
| 31 Aug 2013 | Five questions to Carillion’s chief executive on plumbing works | Water problems at the schools | BBC; Carillion letter | Supported |
| 2 Sep 2013 | BBC South West report on a falsified iron result at St Peter’s | Published report | BBC South West | Supported |
| 26 Sep 2013 | Carillion letter: falsified metals result, restrictions at West Exe | Contractor’s own admission | The letter | Strongly supported |
| 10 Oct 2013 | Asked St Peter’s to confirm website statement on water testing | The school’s own website | Archived page needed | Supported |
| 19–24 Oct 2013 | Windows and overheating claim against the architect | Public court claim | Building Design; Express and Echo | Strongly supported |
| 26 Oct 2013 | Minutes of 8 June 2007 meeting on heating and ventilation | Possible early notice of the problem | Minutes needed | Needs document |
| 29 Oct 2013 | Asked the Department for Education where to complain | Right department, polite request | – | Supported |
| 11 Dec 2013 | Carillion letter: nickel leaching, fountains withdrawn | Documented problem | The letter | Strongly supported |
| 15–16 Dec 2013 | Why are St Peter’s fountains still off? | Carillion letter confirms withdrawal | The letter | Supported |
| 16 Dec 2013 | Completion certificates signed years late? | Fair question to building control | Certificates needed | Needs document |
| 14 Aug 2014 | Lightning risk assessments promised in a 2009 document? | Lightning protection was the subject of the 2010 request | 2009 document needed | Needs document |
| 27 Oct 2014 | Who pays if a PFI contractor goes bankrupt? | Carillion built the six schools | Carillion liquidation, Jan 2018 | Strongly supported |
| 22 Feb 2015 | Payments of nearly £1m a month to the project company | Public money; contract value | Devon spend listing | Supported |
| 23 Mar 2015 | Asked Ofsted for reports on safety at the six schools | Right body, plain question | Ofsted letter | Supported |
| 26–29 Apr 2015 | Isca: as-built file and lightning risk assessment | Basic safety records | School’s replies | Supported |
| 27–29 Apr 2015 | Chudleigh: as-built file after Devon referral | Devon redirected the request | School’s reply | Supported |
| 2 Jun 2014 | Polite follow-up to MP on his letter to Devon | MP had himself written to the council | MP’s letter needed | Supported |
| 10 Jan 2016 | Asked MP to put Merseyside fire findings to Devon | Fire authority report on PFI fire | Merseyside report (via blog) | Strongly supported |
| 13 Apr 2016 | Missing ties as a likely cause; who signed off? | Press reports of missing header ties | Construction press; Midlothian Advertiser | Partly supported |
| 16 Apr 2016 | FOI to Knowsley for eight schools’ as-built files | Council acknowledged fireproofing defects | Construction Management; FIA | Strongly supported |
| 18 Apr 2016 | Will not stop until he sees each school’s as-built file | Statement of purpose | – | Usable statement |
| 30 Apr 2016 | Has Devon replied about the six schools? | Edinburgh closures that month | Building; Construction Management | Supported |
| 11–12 May 2016 | St Luke’s file: wall ties, M&E, completion certificate, testing | Check against the regulations | The file; the code of practice | Partly supported |
| 9 Jul 2016 | Leicester review: as-built files for four schools | Same builder as Edinburgh | Construction Enquirer; Building | Supported |
| 11 Feb 2017 | Escalation after the Cole report | Report published two days earlier | Cole report coverage | Partly supported |
| 12 Mar 2017 | Sodexo contract and academies | Public money | Sodexo announcement | Partly supported |
| 17–18 Mar 2017 | Audit of Mowlem schools; South Bank file request | Demolition and rebuild of one school | Construction Enquirer | Supported |
Appendix B. Documents still needed
• The 2009 Devon document on lightning risk assessments (the copy on the blog is an unreadable image).
• The Ofsted inspection report for St Peter’s, October 2013 (the link on the blog has gone; Ofsted archives its reports).
• Mr Bradshaw’s 2014 letter to Devon County Council and Devon’s reply, and any record of the September 2013 meeting with Carillion and the council.
• Completion certificate dates from Exeter City Council building control.
• The Upper Tribunal decision refusing permission to appeal, April 2016 (the blog copy is a scan with no readable text).
• The Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority report, from the authority itself.
• The full Upper Tribunal (2012) and Court of Appeal (2015) judgments, to check the citations and the quotations used in Chapter 1.
• The June 2007 minutes, and the Building Design report in its original form.
• The Isca and Chudleigh email replies in full, with dates.
• Devon’s published spending listing for payments to the project company.
Sources
Documents: Devon County Council, County Health and Safety Manager, letter on statutory inspections (April 2010); Carillion letters to Mr Bradshaw MP (26 September 2013 and 11 December 2013); Ofsted letter (23 March 2015); school replies from Isca College and Chudleigh Primary School (April 2015); Rowland and Pollock, Understanding the Private Finance Initiative: the school governor’s essential guide to PFI (UNISON, January 2002).
Published reports: BBC South West (September 2013); This is Exeter (May 2013); Express and Echo; Building Design (Carillion claim over windows); Construction Enquirer (South Bank Primary, July 2016); Construction Management, Fire Industry Association and Building (Knowsley, Edinburgh and Leicester); Construction Index, Holyrood and gov.scot (Cole report, February 2017); Midlothian Advertiser; The Guardian; Sodexo announcement of the Exeter contract.
Cases: Information Commissioner v Devon County Council and Dransfield [2012] UKUT 440 (AAC); Dransfield v Information Commissioner and Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454. Citations to be verified against the judgments.
The blog is Alan Dransfield’s Blog, administered on his behalf by Sheila Oliver. It is cited here only for what he asked and when. Third-party articles are paraphrased, not reproduced.
