Like with motorcycles, maintenance is key. Inside a dry envelope RAAC offered a cheaper lightweight option to design and build contractors who signed up for all the government PFI design finance build operate, and building projects back in the 90s. They only needd to make it last for the 25 year contract length then they were offski. Often they sold their contracts to operating companies even earlier. So nobody spent any money on maintenance. Add in the bonfire of local government planning and building control resources in local government around the same time (because we had quality assurance so everything was self certified
) that did bugger all for quality control and regulatory enforcement.
So we have not particularly well built buildings that have had little or no maintenance handed over to an education system controlled by people who know little or nothing about buildings and with even less interest in them because there's no votes in maintenance and it's not sexy on your political cv. Another10 to 15 years pass by, the water gets in , rusts the rebar and politicians are surprised when building start falling down. To be fair to the head teachers and hospital trusts, they've been on the case for years but the government wasn't listening. Politicians do not make any news out of preventing something, but wait until there's a crisis and try to look clever during its solution without taking responsibility for anything. Cynical? Moi? Anyway what was that about K1300s again?