- guardian.co.uk,
- Monday November 17 2003 15:16 GMT
The troubled construction company Jarvis today announced a programme of repair work at the Jewish Free School in north London, following a safety incident that closed the school.
Jarvis built the new school at Kenton as a private finance initiative, following a move from the old JFS site in Camden. It was opened by the prime minister last year as a shining example of this key government policy.
The closure of the school when a faulty light fixing was discovered in the canteen comes as further embarrassment to the company, which last month pulled out of day-to-day rail maintenance after criticism of its performance. The incident followed a potentially serious one six months ago, when a heavy lighting gantry crashed to the floor of the gym - which was fortunately empty at the time.
A spokesperson for Jarvis said today: "There was an incident with a light fixing at JFS on Friday November 7. Jarvis acted on the incident immediately by cordoning off the area.
"At the weekend following the incident, Jarvis checked all the lights with fixings of the same type as the one that failed, and added fixings of a different type to make doubly sure the lights are safe. In the next few weeks all the fittings of the original suspect type will be replaced.
"The school was temporarily closed on the Friday the incident occurred but, because a Jarvis team worked throughout the whole weekend, was able to open for business as usual on Monday."
The statement continued: "There was an incident where a light fixing failed six months ago. It was at the end of the day and nobody was in the area affected. An independent report carried out after the incident found no fault with the fixings in question. However, in light of this recent incident, Jarvis in partnership with the school, has decided to replace them."
Ironically, JFS is the venue for a conference on private finance in education later this month. The event, titled "Education PPP - delivering schools for the future", includes a session on "the exemplar designs for school buildings and how they will be delivered to local market".
