British Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt has said that the government would move to fix unsafe school buildings quickly after some 100 schools were told to shut some buildings due to old and crumbling concrete.

On Sunday, Hunt told broadcasters a majority of the 104 affected schools — out of a total of 22,000 across England — will be able to operate largely normally.

"We will spend what it takes to sort out this problem as quickly as possible," he told the BBC.

The order last week for schools to vacate buildings with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) came just days before the start of a new term for most children, angering parents and educators over the last-minute decision.

More than 50 other education sites have already been forced to put "mitigations in place" this year due to the presence of RAAC.

Hunt told Sky News that officials had initiated a "huge survey" of every single school in the country to identify where RAAC is in place.

Crumbling concrete scandal

RAAC — a cheap, lightweight form of concrete — was widely used in parts of building construction across Britain from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, with concerns about its risk of collapse emerging since 2018.

That year the roof of a primary school in Kent, southeast England, collapsed without warning.

Structural experts have warned RAAC is likely to be found within many other sites, including hospitals, courts and some public housing, and they may also have to close for remedial works.

Meanwhile, the Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures UK organisation has repeatedly warned in reports that RAAC planks are present in many types of UK buildings.

The "useful life" of such planks has been estimated to be around 30 years, it has noted.

In addition, the Sunday Times reported that experts have cautioned that asbestos could be exposed in the schools affected by the crumbling concrete, resulting in many being shut for months.

The impression that public infrastructure is crumbling adds to the pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of an election expected next year, following a period marked by disruptive industrial action across healthcare, education and transport.

Education officials, public sector unions and opposition parties have hit out at the government's handling of the issue, in particular the short notice given to impacted schools ahead of the new term.

"I am extremely disappointed and frustrated that there was not a plan in place for this happening," England's children's commissioner Rachel De Souza told the BBC. "There should have been planning in place and a really good school building programme that has addressed this over the years."

"The government has spent the summer sitting on its hands as the concrete crumbles in our schools," Bridget Phillipson, the education spokesperson for the opposition Labour Party, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.