Building maintenance

I recently acquired by grandmother's old house. She was already quite elderly when she bought it from Margaret Thatcher in the great giveaway of council houses in the 1980s. Yes, Millennials, you read that right. They gave away houses practically for free in the 1980s.

Anyway, she passed away some years ago, and my mother let it out to tenants who didn't take very god care of the place. Finally I have got it. As you might imagine, it needs a lot spending on it, from new doors to a new kitchen and bathroom. All the rooms need redecorating, the chimney has been boarded up and needs something doing with, the ceiling in the downstairs room needs replastering.

That's what happens when you don't spend about 1% of a building's capital cost each year on repairs. Eventually it starts to look shabby, and then it's a big bill for emergency refurbishment just to get it looking acceptable. And it's the same for schools. The snag is that you can always put off necessary maintenance to next year. But it's a false economy, a case of pretending to balance the books. It very rapidly catches up with you, and sends a powerful message to children that their education doesn't matter.

British schools have been doing this big time. So much so that the Labour government had to embark on a massive programme of refurbishment, at vast public expense. It's the sort of mismanagement you get in top down systems, where you have yearly budgets but no-one actually responsible for the institution in the long term.