Light switches

If the Panorama report is true, how are the Titus Salt students taught about the need to conserve energy?

I contacted them direct.

"Apologies for not replying as yet to your request but we have only just
received your email as there has been a technical fault on the enquiries
mail box at our school which has now been resolved.

We will attend to your request and reply as soon as possible."

Dear Mr Paulley

Once again, apologies for not responding sooner but as I stated in my
previous email, problems with our ‘enquiries@tss’ address led to us only
receiving your email and therefore your FOI request today.

With regard to the statement “elements of ..school….were built without
light switches, such that the lights are on 24 hours a day” is not
accurate. No lights are left on 24 hours a day. The building was
designed and built with motion sensors in corridor areas so as to avoid
anyone “forgetting” to turn off light switches. As you can appreciate
this is a time-delay system but negates the need for traditional on/off
switches. All rooms have a combination of on/off and motion sensors.

The building serves as a community resource after the school contracted
hours of 6:00pm and therefore a number of community groups use the
facilities for a range of events which can go late into the evening but
usually are complete by 10:00pm when the facilities management staff
will finalise locking all gates and doors – which as you can appreciate
takes time. The school grounds are open daily from 6:00am with
facilities management staff arriving around 5:00am to open gates and
doors which does mean that some lights are again turned on.

The technical/energy consumption detail you have requested is not within
our aegis but if you were to contact the BSF team for Bradford Council
using: steve.hemming@bradford.gov.uk
<mailto:steve.hemming@bradford.gov.uk> they may be able to help you.

Kind regards

Ian Morrel
Deputy Headteacher

This is directly at odds with what Panorama said here: http://youtu.be/dv-VSxJ5nlQ

Apologies; an uploading error - the video is at http://youtu.be/fMN5BVT2DmM

Response from the BBC's Complaints Department:

I write in response to your recent submission via the BBC Complaints webform regarding the Panorama programme entitled “Who's Getting Rich on Your Money?” broadcast on 28 November 2011. Please accept my apologies for not being able to respond somewhat sooner, but we have been carefully reviewing your complaint and speaking with all those directly involved to ensure that all your points could be fully addressed.

Firstly we would like to congratulate you on obtaining a response from the school under the Freedom of Information Act. Despite the BBC making serious allegations about the shortcomings in the design and operation of the school building the Panorama team were unable get a direct response from the school despite weeks of emails and phone calls.

We note your Freedom of Information response from the school covers a number of points. However while the BBC understands that the automatic systems referred to in the FOI response are installed at the school, it is also the BBC’s understanding that the automatic system was programmed for the lights to stay on all night and the school did not have the means to change this locally. This would account for the fact that when the production team visited the school the lights were all burning brightly even in corridors and communal areas where we could see no sign of activity. The central allegations were also corroborated by three neighbours, one of whom told us that she had to wear an “eye mask” in order to sleep as these lights from the school shone directly into her bedroom. All the neighbours we spoke to also confirmed that the lights burnt unnecessarily all night and throughout the year both during and outside term times.

This allegation was put to the school by Panorama and in their response to the programme did not deny it. Since the programme was broadcast we have had no further clarification or complaint from the school.

The reporter, as you would expect, put several highly specific questions about the lights to several bodies, notably the school itself, Bradford Council and Integrated Schools Bradford (the PFI consortium). Our questions drew no response from any of them; the response on behalf of all the parties came from a PR company in London which was just a general statement but there was no denial on the point about the lights, indeed no specifics generally.

Bradford National Union of Teachers commissioned an academic report into the three local PFI schools in 2008 which found that in the communal areas of the schools there was no manual means of turning out the lights, and this was reiterated verbally to our team, that the lights were indeed on all through the day, since they were operated remotely and were programmed to stay on 24 hours a day, and the school itself had no means of changing this. The NUT made reference to the automatic systems, commenting that unfortunately the caretaker did not know how to work the computerised system. The report went on to state that “It was a pity that in these communal areas lights were left on continually. There were no manual means of switching off the lights and no daylight linked controls in very brightly daylit areas”.

Of course, the opening segment of the programme was merely a real-life case which we had researched and investigated to illustrate one issue of PFI schemes as being somewhat unaccountable in that absolutely no-one replied to the central “simple question” we posed about lights and light switches. That all being the case, we are happy that our programme accurately reflected the reality of the situation at the school as confirmed to us by several sources.

Yours sincerely

Kind Regards

Claire Jordan

BBC Complaints