The Sunday Herald

Leading architect Malcolm Fraser has resigned from a Scottish Executive advisory panel over concerns that schools built using private finance could be damaging children. Fraser, who has been deputy chairman of Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS) for two years, said some schools built with public-private partnership (PPP) funding have suffered "catastrophically poor" design that would "blight the lives of those who learn in them". Fraser also claims A+DS rejected his calls to investigate whether using private finance to build schools was value for money. In his resignation letter to culture minister Patricia Ferguson he writes: "The general silence of the building industry on this issue is a disgrace. All know of its fundamental flaws, but there is a river of money flowing from it towards us so we keep schtum." Fraser said instead of A+DS acting independently, "good architects are being turned by A+DS into an ersatz civil service".