A government that relies too much on anecdote, doesn’t have enough specialists in top positions and isn’t properly held to account.

That was the disagnosis from Len Cook, who used to be head of statistics for both the New Zealand and the UK governments, and who gave a very entertaining – but also worrying – talk last night on how our government runs.

Speaking at an IPANZ and IGPS seminar, his argument was that several problems are seriously hampering New Zealand’s ability to foot it in the twenty-first century.

The first is that our government isn’t currently dealing with a world that is becoming much, much more complex – we’re still trying to make decisions on the back of an anecdotal, ‘she’ll be right’ approach that might have been fine 50 years ago, but isn’t now.

“This country has made so much policy on the basis of anecdote and a lack of evidence. It isn’t clear that our future can be so dependent on serendipity and received wisdom.”

In particular, we don’t go back and look at what went wrong, Cook argued. “The absence of a commitment to evaluate [the success or failure of policies] in New Zealand government is extraordinary.”

New Zealanders were “amazed” by how much evaluation the British government did, he said. “We do very, very little … We need a proper review of things that go wrong as part of our culture.”

New Zealand was also behind in terms of how much it spent finding out about how its ‘non-traditional’ trading partners – such as China – functioned. While New Zealanders were very comfortable in, say, the UK, they didn’t put much effort into understanding countries less similar to theirs.

The second big problem is in the way government departments are run. Senior public sector workers now have to do so much managerial work, Cook said, that the amount of time spent on making sure that good-quality advice is being provided is correspondingly reduced.

The government also recruits too many “generalists” to run departments, so that “you have to go down three levels [in a department] before you find someone who knows what they are talking about”.

Senior public leaders were also failing to develop the next generation of leaders in the way they had done in the days of greater cooperation and the “college of cardinals” approach among chief executives.

The third big problem is that the government isn’t properly accountable for its actions, Cook said.

Ministers often haven’t been required to actually answer questions – except more recently under Lockwood Smith as Speaker – and select committees don’t have the “grunt” and the power they do in the UK.

In short, for the last century, Cook said, New Zealand had traded in well-known markets with long-established partners, and had been able to get by on ideology and beliefs – but no longer. “We have to develop a more enquiring capacity to analyse what’s happening.”

After his speech, people in the audience backed up some of these concerns, and expressed others. One public sector worker, in particular, talked about how the quality of policy advice was being compromised by “the desire to please ministers”, and cuts to budgets that took place “to the detriment of good advice”.

Because policy analysis was increasingly being “retrofitted” around what the minister had decided, often in the absence of good evidence, ministries now produced “policy-based evidence” rather than “evidence-based policy”, the public sector worker said.

The wit and wisdom of Len Cook

On cross-party liaisons being forbidden: “In recent years, it’s become important to sleep in sheets of the same colour, whether you’re at home or not.”

On ministerial competence: “We have a great political system, but it’s like giving the keys to the car to teenagers on Saturday night – and they do wheelies with it.”

On government being so fragmented by the 1980s and 90s structural changes: ministerial responsibilities are “a random scattering, a bit like pick-up sticks”.

On Sky City: “20 years ago, I fired a mid-ranking public official who spoke to one of the parties [in a tender] and gave them information he shouldn’t have. Did I make the wrong decision?”

On inquiries: New Zealanders look for “a safe pair of hands” to run a review, whereas the British want to be “done over by the best bastard”.

Unions fear government spending on consultants could skyrocket after it was revealed that the bill hit $375 million last financial year – and John Key warned of “significant” restructuring to come.

The Government spent more than $375 million on consultants and contractors in 2010-11 as a series of government restructurings made thousands of public sector workers redundant, figures show.

Consultants were paid as much as $275 an hour or $2500 a day, according to figures released by 31 government departments and agencies under the Official Information Act.

Some departments are increasing spending on consultants while getting rid of workers who, across all the departments involved, make an average of $33 an hour based on a 40-hour week.

The $375 million is lower than the $400 million the same departments spent in 2008-09, Labour’s last year in power.

Cabinet minister Tony Ryall said consultants were used only when it did not make sense to have permanent staff – for example on short-term projects or schemes needing particular technical skills.

This “expertise” had helped government departments respond to change, he said. “[But] over time I would expect that the costs associated with buying in this expertise would go down.”

However, Richard Wagstaff, national secretary of the Public Services Association, said the $375 million was “significantly” higher than the $335 million the same departments had spent in 2009-10, National’s first year.

That showed departments had lost “a lot of institutional knowledge” when 2000 public sector workers were made redundant under National, and faced “desperate capability and capacity problems”.

The Prime Minister’s promise of “significant” restructurings next year would mean further public sector job cuts and even more consultants employed, Mr Wagstaff said.

It was “extraordinary” that some departments were spending more on consultants despite shedding in-house staff, he added.

Since 2008, the Ministry of Economic Development has increased spending on consultants by $12 million – enough to pay for 161 in-house workers – and made 29 staff redundant.

In a statement, the ministry said the increased spending was due to several major IT upgrades and work on new projects including the Rugby World Cup, the national cycleway and the emissions trading scheme.

Similarly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade more than doubled its spending on consultants, from $4.5 million to $9.8 million, while shedding 14 staff. Its biggest increases came in HR, information and public affairs, and property management.

Other departments to increase consultancy spending but shed staff included the Ministry of Transport, Te Puni Kokiri and the Ministry of Health.

Mr Ryall said consultants were not used to replace staff made redundant. But Mr Wagstaff said many consultants were former public sector workers “doing the same thing they used to do, but for a lot more money”.

Some spending on consultants was appropriate, he said, “but they shouldn’t be doing things that departments could do for themselves and which would be cheaper in the long run for departments to do”.

The figures released by departments under the Official Information Act show government consulting can be a lucrative business. Department of Internal Affairs figures reveal it paid consultants Citrix $275 an hour for advice on “identity services”.

It also paid IT firm Silverstripe $2,500 a day for work on data.govt.nz, a project to give the public easier access to government statistics.

Meanwhile, Housing New Zealand paid accounting firm Deloitte $4.2 million in one year to work on projects including an “affordable housing owners’ forum”.

In the election campaign, then Labour leader Phil Goff attacked National’s plan to pay Australian investment bankers Lazard $100 million for advice on its plan to part-sell state assets.

And the Herald reported in September that the Department of Corrections has hired 18 different firms of advisers for a planned privately run prison in Auckland, at a likely cost of $11 million.

A State Services Commission report from July this year backed some of the concerns expressed about consultancy spending.

The commission’s reviews of government departments found that they needed to adopt “an approach of recruiting skilled personnel … to build internal capability and progressively lessen the reliance on contractors”.

Otherwise, they risked losing vital knowledge about how to carry out their work, which they would then have to buy in.

First published in The New Zealand Herald

Government funding cuts could see struggling district health boards (DHBs) go further into deficit, the Treasury has admitted.

In a briefing paper, officials say the boards will have find an extra $258 million over the next four years because the government no longer subsidises their Kiwisaver and pensions contributions.

“If an individual DHB is unable to fully fund this cost pressure, the level of its deficit would increase,” the paper says.

Capital and Coast Health DHB, which ran a $47.5 million deficit in 2009-10, will have to find an extra $20 million in savings as a result of the changes. It has already cut millions of dollars’ worth of services, including home help to the elderly and mental health clinics.

The DHB did not respond to APNZ’s questions at the time of going to press.

Health Minister Tony Ryall said the extra costs were a “very small” amount – less than 1% of the boards’ total budget of over $10 billion.

Their financial management had “improved significantly” since National took office, and their projected deficits had fallen $160 million to around $30 million this year, he said.

Brent Wiseman, the chief financial officer of the Auckland DHB, said staff were working more efficiently, “which mean that more services can be delivered for the same costs”.

The board hoped to run a surplus next year despite having to find an extra $40 million in the next four years.

However, Grant Robertson, Labour’s health spokesperson, said the government had made it clear that health boards would not get extra funding to make up for the subsidy being cut.

“This means it will have to come from already over-stretched budgets and will inevitably lead to cuts in services.”

Health received an extra $452 million in May’s Budget, but the CTU has estimated that that was nearly $110 million short of what was needed to keep pace with increased staffing and equipment purchasing costs.

“These are DHBs that are already suffering from underfunding,” Mr Robertson said. “The amount of money they have been given has not kept up with the cost of inflation and an ageing population for the last two years, and this is just another blow to them.”

The Treasury briefing paper also reveals that schools will have to find an extra $304 million over the next four years as a result of the changes.
Education Minister Anne Tolley said “no decisions” had been made about how the cost would be met.

However, Sue Moroney, Labour’s education spokesperson, warned that parents would have to pick up the tab.

“It’s worrying, because the only places that schools can get funding is from government, from parents via school fees, or from fundraising.

“So the picture this paints is that they will be even more pressure on parents to pay even higher school fees. Families are really struggling out there, and they just can’t cope with these continued increases in costs.”

Schools got a 2.9% increase in the operation grant funding in the Budget, but Ms Moroney said that was not enough to keep pace with inflation or growth in school rolls.

The Treasury paper also warns that the Ministry of Education payroll system may find it “challenging” to make the changes to staff’s pay by next year. But the ministry said it “considers it will be possible” to make the changes in time.

Ngatikaura Ngati died after horrific abuse by his parents. Children’s advocates are appalled that pictures of a young Auckland boy killed by his parents were posted on a pornographic site featuring beheadings, impalement and necrophilia.

Ngatikaura Ngati died in 2006 after horrific abuse by his parents, who were convicted of his manslaughter.

Pictures of his dead body were controversially released by the trial judge in 2007 to publicise the harm caused by child abuse.

In February this year, the pictures were posted on a website that contains pornography and graphic images of violent deaths.

Victims’ rights campaigner Rachael Ford, who came across the images this week while researching the case of Ngatikaura Ngati, said the site was disturbing.

The website, which the Weekend Herald has decided not to name, claims to be educational and to “wake people up to the reality” of violence.

However, it contains pictures of necrophilia and naked women being impaled, and comments by readers make it clear they find the material sexually arousing.

The pictures of Ngatikaura were published next to explicit images of hardcore pornography.

The website, which is based overseas, also runs caption competitions encouraging readers to make fun of people who have died violent deaths.

At the time the pictures were released, the then Children’s Commissioner, Cindy Kiro, attacked the move, saying that once the images were placed on the internet, there was no way of controlling who saw them or how they were used.

Dr Kiro also said it was abhorrent that the pictures were then circulated in an email petition calling for tougher action on child abuse.

“Circulating them allows for further abuse in the death of a child who was abused in life. It is abhorrent to have them circulated in this way.”

The present Children’s Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills, was not available for interview. But in a statement, he said he was “appalled to learn that images of Ngatikaura Ngati have been used on this website”.

He had referred the matter to the Department of Internal Affairs and the police, and said he would continue to monitor the issue.

At the time the pictures were released, Inspector Richard Middleton, who led the police case against Ngatikaura’s parents, said publishing the photos could have a positive effect and help to prevent further abuse.

This week he stood by that view.

First published in The New Zealand Herald

Government agencies twice failed to act on calls for more research that could have helped Christchurch prepare better for February’s fatal earthquake, victims’ families have claimed.

The families say the agencies “didn’t do the right things” and missed several chances to identify high-risk areas and strengthen key buildings.

They say the first opportunity was missed in 2005, when consultants Opus urged Environment Canterbury to model a magnitude 7 earthquake “on a hidden earthquake source close – say 10km to 20km – to Christchurch”.

February’s earthquake was a magnitude 6.3 tremor on a buried fault around 9km from the city centre.

Environment Canterbury’s director of investigations and monitoring, Ken Taylor, said most of the Opus recommendations were taken up by Crown research institutes GNS and Niwa in a project called Riskscape.

Riskscape models the danger posed by earthquakes, tsunamis and other hazards across the country, but is not yet complete.

Jim Cousins, a GNS scientist who has worked on Christchurch earthquake modelling, said he did not think the Opus recommendation had been carried out. “If it had been done, I would have probably known about it.”

In response to an Official Information Act request, Environment Canterbury indicated it had commissioned further research on hidden faults in 2008, but was unable to explain what use it had made of it.

The agency said it “has tested the prototype Riskscape model, but has not used it to run risk assessments”.

Rachael Ford, whose uncle died in the February 22 quake, said the agencies’ response was inadequate.

“This research should have been done,” she said. “And if it had been, I think there would have been a far better mindset around preparation.”

However, Mr Cousins said even if the modelling had been carried out, a major earthquake might still have been regarded as unlikely and not planned for.

“It would have suffered the same difficulty as other modelling – it would have been given a very low probability.”

Ms Ford also claimed authorities missed a second chance to prepare for February’s earthquake, which killed 181 people.

After the September 2010 earthquake, GNS applied to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission (Cerc) for funding to carry out a study of hidden faults under Christchurch.

At the time a leading geologist, Geotech Consulting’s Dr Mark Yetton, told a Christchurch newspaper that money spent on “good quality, modern seismic surveys” had been needed “for quite a while”.

However, Cerc was wound up and replaced by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority before it had a chance to process funding applications. GNS’ resubmitted application was approved only after February’s earthquake.

Ms Ford said it showed agencies “just haven’t done the right things”.

“What they should have done, and what’s been done in other cities that have suffered earthquakes, is have the blind faults studied.”

GNS scientist Kelvin Berryman said the application had suffered “a bit of bureaucratic hurdles and go-slow”, though it had been “expedited quite quickly” after February’s earthquake.

However, even if approved immediately, the research might not have been completed before February, and would only have been indicative, he added. “We weren’t going to stop an earthquake happening even by finding out there were faults there.”

Ms Ford also claimed authorities had failed to create a detailed earthquake risk map of Christchurch, as was done in parts of California following a major earthquake in 1971. Such a map might have revealed that buildings in certain areas needed further strengthening or other action, she said.

Mr Berryman said that despite February’s earthquake, Christchurch was an area of low seismic activity. Limited resources meant detailed mapping had inevitably been concentrated on areas of greater risk, such as Wellington, he said.

First published in The New Zealand Herald

The Government will spend $11 million on consultants and $10 million on internal costs before they start building a new prison in Auckland.

Department of Corrections documents released under the Official Information Act show it is already employing 18 companies, including accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and British lawyers Allen & Overy, to help oversee the deal.

The 960-bed prison will be a public private partnership (PPP), in which a private company pays for, builds and runs the facility.

The Corrections Department’s own analysis say this may cost more than a publicly owned prison.

Corrections deputy chief executive Christine Stevenson said costs were high because it was New Zealand’s first PPP prison.

The consultants would provide “specialist technical advice” and outside scrutiny.

But the Corrections Association, which represents prison officers, said the consultants were “hired guns” who offered little value.

“They quickly work out what the payer wants them to say and they research to that,” said the union’s president, Beven Hanlon.

Ms Stevenson refused to say how much a public prison would have cost to set up, or put a figure on the prison’s total construction cost. Internal Corrections documents suggest it could be about $300 million.

PPP schemes overseas have been criticised for employing large numbers of lawyers, accountants and consultants.

The Haringey local council in London spent £24 million ($46 million) on consultants before it started its school-building programme.

Conservative MP Richard Bacon told the Financial Times this year: “It is clear that [PPP] has spawned an entire industry of advisers who have done extremely well out of it.”

Corrections’ business case says the costs of a PPP “will be higher” than those of a public prison, because private companies pay more to borrow money and need to make “commercial returns”.

The deal will be cheaper only if the company can run the prison 10 to 15 per cent cheaper than the department.

The Corrections Association said a private firm would “most definitely” make savings by cutting staff and wages, putting prison safety at risk.

Three consortiums, all headed by Australian security firms, have been shortlisted for the contract, expected to be signed by July.

The numbers:

• $11 million sum the Government will spend on consultants for the new men’s prison at Wiri
• $10 million sum spent on internal costs before the prison is built
• 18 companies employed by Department of Corrections on the project
• 960 number of beds proposed new prison will have

First published in The New Zealand Herald

While citizen involvement has become an election buzzword, local groups are left railing against the reality.

A warm, sunny Sunday in April brings the season’s first sunbathers on to the shingled beaches of Hastings, in East Sussex. A perfect day, too, for promenading on the pier – or it would be if it hadn’t been closed for four years as a health hazard to the public.

Hastings pier, owned since 2000 by Panama-based property company Ravenclaw, is a potent symbol of community decline. Behind its barred gates, the shops lie empty and the attractions are boarded up. It needs at least £2m in structural repairs after successive owners have let its pillars and trusses decay.

Citizen involvement is a main plank in the political parties’ election campaigns, with the Conservatives promising a community right-to-buy as part of its plans for a big society. This would give groups the first right of refusal on assets – such as parks and libraries – sold off by public agencies. Labour, meanwhile, can point to the Advancing Assets for Communities programme, a series of pilot schemes designed to transfer local assets to community groups.

But the fight by the Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust (HPWRT) to take control of their local amenity is a salutory lesson in how difficult community ownership can be in practice.

Angela Davis, an HPWRT trustee, says it has been “three years of battle” to get the Conservative-run borough council to back the idea of handing over the pier to the community group, using a compulsory purchase order. The group believes that a rejuvenated pier – with a traders’ market, bars and shops – would help Hastings to reverse falling visitor numbers and regenerate the town.

It has taken seven months for the group to get a £75,000 grant, from the government’s Community Builders programme, for a feasibility study of its proposals.

“You do need business acumen within a community group,” says Davis, pointing out that her fellow trustees include the manager of a local shopping centre and a hotel owner. If all goes well, she plans to ask Community Builders for the £2m needed to restore the front section of the pier, and the Heritage Lottery Fund for at least another £2m to tackle the rest.

The other big obstacle is time – or lack of it. Davis, a former business and IT consultant, has the financial security to work unpaid for over 50 hours a week, but points out that, for most people, “life is difficult enough earning a living, raising a family, and so on” without trying to take over the local library or community centre.

A recent report by the Asset Transfer Unit (ATU), the government-funded arm of the Development Trusts Association, reveals that only 11 of the 75 pilots launched in April 2007 to transfer local assets to community groups have been successful, with a further 15 nearly completed.

The little-used Sneyd Green community hall in Stoke-on-Trent is one success story. Taken over and transformed by the local community association, it is now fully booked for events months in advance. Another success is in South Gloucestershire, where a local group is now running Winterbourne Medieval Barn and using it to host community events and education programmes.

However, the ATU’s report identifies problems on both sides. Many councils are risk averse, and are unwilling to invest the time, energy and money needed. Some have “confrontational” relationships with community groups, or are seeking to offload only assets damaged beyond repair. On the other side, many community groups “require significant time and in-depth support”, especially where they have little or no experience of running assets.

The report says it is too early to say if those problems are greater in deprived communities, where most pilots take place, but it admits that the subject “may well merit further investigation”.

In particular, groups need “unfettered investment capital” – something that may be harder to find in poorer areas. The bottom line, the report says, is that asset transfers can take, on average, five years from first contact.

Back in Hastings, Davis remains optimistic that, if all goes well, her group could have control of the pier by the end of the year. But, given the obstacles they have faced, she says that to expect hundreds of other local groups to follow their lead is “very much an ideal”.

First published in The Guardian

Could money be saved by turning empty office blocks, and even old Woolworths shops, into schools?

Bristol Cathedral choir school’s principal, Neil Blundell, is striding along the corridor of the school’s newest building, the Parsonage, when he spots a pupil leaning against the wall, shirt-tails peeping out from beneath his sweater. “Would you like to tuck that shirt in?” he asks firmly, adding: “And don’t lean on that wall – it’s only been up for eight weeks.”

The wall is indeed only eight weeks old – because the Parsonage was until this year a completely open-plan building. It was, in fact, an office block. When the choir school moved from the independent sector to become an academy last year, it had to find room for an anticipated 300 more pupils. Because it sits on a cramped site littered with listed buildings – including the cathedral itself – a huge new edifice was out of the question, Blundell says.

Fortunately, there was an office block lying empty in one corner of the site. The block had been built for letting, as an investment, but no tenant had been found. In under four months – and for just £1.3m, against £25m for a new school – it was converted into a home for the computing, maths and foreign language departments.

From the outside, its pale cream knobbly concrete walls and grey slate roofs are reminders of its immediate past. Inside, the impression of still being in an office – children in uniform aside – is reinforced. Classrooms that could be meeting rooms open off white corridors; the ceilings are rather low; and there is little natural light.

The building has its problems. As an open-plan office, it was designed for workers evenly spread across each floor; the result is that the classrooms often overheat when pupils pack in for lessons. Because the building is next to a major road, the external windows don’t open, and the relatively low ceilings leave no room to install further ventilation. As he pauses to look into a classroom, Blundell is told by one teacher that her room suffers from “really, really horrible” humidity.

However, he insists, taking over an open-plan building gave the school tremendous flexibility, and ventilation problems can be sorted out, just as the school dealt with the lack of light in classrooms – which have few windows – by painting everything in pale colours.

Blundell claims to have had only positive comments from parents. As for the pupils, they seem happy enough. “It’s very smart, more modern,” says Sam, a pupil in year 10, who seems far more interested in the new computers than the decor. “It doesn’t feel like an office block now,” he adds.

Although a new building “is always going to be better”, Blundell says, “for this school, it was the right thing to do. I’m delighted with it. I don’t think we could have got a better solution.”

It’s an idea that could become widespread. The Conservatives have already made it clear that, should they win power next year, schools will have to do more with less, swapping new buildings for converting old offices, church halls and municipal buildings.

Experts think it can be done: refurbishment and remodelling “already play a major part” in school building programmes, says Ty Goddard, the head of the British Council for School Environments. In future, “imagination and wise thinking” will be needed to make the most of what’s there already, he adds.

In the US, schools are created from offices, supermarkets and, in a distinctively American touch, shopping malls. The Tories also point to Sweden, where the much-hyped free schools movement relies on companies starting up schools without any capital grants. Looking for cheap options, they will convert old military barracks, factories and even, in one case, a former observatory.

Steve Bolingbroke heads the UK operations of the company Kunskapsskolan, which runs over 30 Swedish schools in converted buildings. A year ago, he identified several sites in the south east of the UK as ripe for conversion – among them, somewhat staggeringly, London’s BT Tower, previously known as the Post Office Tower.

Kunskapsskolan’s interest was rebuffed, so it won’t happen. But, Bolingbroke insists: “A school on top of the Post Office Tower would be a great place for kids to understand the geography of London. How great [that would be] – having a lesson about the geography of London while actually looking at it.”

Others have equally ambitious schemes. Professor Stephen Heppell, of Bournemouth University, is working with Rotherham council on plans to turn the town’s disused shops into schools. This would help to regenerate run-down high streets, and could be incredibly cheap, Heppell argues. He claims businesses will lease empty buildings for nothing as long as they are maintained – because that allows them to count the shops as assets on their balance sheet, and then borrow against those assets.

Under Heppell’s plan, which the council has agreed to explore, an old Woolworths store would, for example, “make a very fine Da Vinci studio – you know, science and art [together]”.

“If there’s a change of government, and [school building] gets squeezed, this is a really interesting route for creating learning environments that are exciting – and that are value for money,” he says.

Not everyone is convinced that the conversion model works. John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, has visited Swedish schools. “How companies make a profit is by taking over ex-public buildings, or indeed private buildings, and furnishing them to the minimum standard,” he says. “It didn’t look particularly good. It didn’t seem appropriate.”

Peter Clegg, of schools architects Feilden Clegg Bradley, says he isn’t against the idea in principle, but he doubts it will work. Britain’s archaic planning system makes changing the use of any building slow and complicated, he argues. For that reason, the Conservatives are already plotting changes to planning regulations “to make it easier to set up schools”, a spokesman says.

But there may not be enough good-quality buildings – with high ceilings and excellent day-lighting and ventilation – available for conversion, Clegg says. “If we’re looking at taking over crap buildings and turning them into schools, it isn’t going to look very good.”

Another problem with converting office blocks lies in providing playgrounds and sports fields. “Children need space outside,” says Bangs. “You need playgrounds, you need areas you can convert to sustainable activities, like farms.”

But in Sweden, Bolingbroke says, Kunskapsskolan hires out local council sports halls or uses other schools’ facilities. Meanwhile, architects say schools could build playgrounds on the rooftops of converted offices. Although the combination of teenage children, sports equipment and a multi-storey drop may seem faintly alarming, in practice it already exists.

St Mary Magdalene academy, in north London, has a playground on its roof; as will St George’s school, in Westminster, when it is finished next year. Its playground will be surrounded by a three-metre-high parapet wall and covered by a net to stop balls bouncing over. “You create quite a secure environment,” says John Wood of construction firm Bouygues, which is working on the project.

Some parents may hate the idea of converted buildings, he admits. “Parents like to be reassured with gleaming new schools and state-of-the-art facilities.” But, he adds: “All it takes is a few architects to create wonderful converted buildings. Then parents won’t mind whether the kids are in an old office, factory or warehouse.”

First published in The Guardian