Can a school legally stay open without running water?

At school today the water supply stopped working...

Which meant that nobody was allowed to use any of the toilets or sinks except those present in the Sports Hall (for some reason they were working)
But the water in the sports hall wasn't drinking water...

Question...

was it legal for my school to stay open and forcing 1,100 boys to use about 4 toilets?
felt pretty disgusting to me .... especially when we're meant to be washing our hands more because of swine flu...

Is anyone super clever and knows where to find the rules around school closures? I'm not sure where to look - but i'm sick of being **** on by school which had no concern for our health and wellbeing :-(

if it were a company and we were employees it would surely be totally different....

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

username234673

Hand wipes, bottled water, a pair.

/thread

Reply 2

Leighthesim

pretty sure they can't, but they would argue they do have running water, i would think that your school would be closed tomorrow if they can't get it back on since if it is as bad as you say, they would have seen the mayhem and decided its not a good idea.

Reply 3

Mother_Russia

There is definitely a law which states that there should be a certain amount of toilets for a number of people in a building such as a school/office. Look into that.

Reply 4

Jiktori

Bushes/ Portaloos = Problem solved.

Reply 5

Gingermadman

Everytime my school didn't have running water, it had to be shut down till fixed.

Reply 6

Sakuraba

My college had to be closed because there was no wtaer running, we were all very willing to continue on with our lectures and our teacher was willing to stay and teach us..but hten the Health and safety Nazi's showed up and forced us out

Reply 7

Vision

As far as I'm aware it's something like 50 people to one toilet stall. So 1100 boys for 4 toilets is illegal if I'm right. And if you have food being served in the building (which obviously you do) then there must be access to hot and cold running water.

Reply 8

dbmag9

If the water stopped part-way through the day I'm fairly sure they're justified in saying you should stay for the rest of the day. It's not like you're in the Sahara, and if it's a boys school you should be able to use the surrounding environment to your advantage. :p:

I can imagine that continuing school if they can't fix it might be a problem. If you're into sabotage, I'm fairly sure there are similar rules about heating (although most large schools will have a bank of electric heaters in reserve).

As for feeling unclean, man up. :yep:

And come post in LGBT chat; we're lonely over there.

Reply 9

Lara C.

Wanting a day off are we haha

Get back to school you little scrotes! :P

Reply 10

electriic_ink

You must hate it there.

Reply 11

tom//

no its against health and safety

Reply 12

=gabriel=

mikeyd85

Hand wipes, bottled water, a pair.

/thread

Hand wipes? would you go like 'Ah, I see It's likely the water pipes will stop working today so I'll go and buy myself some hand wipes before school!'? Obviously this guy didn't know it was gonna happen and unless the school supply those you can't use any.

Reply 13

onlytruths

Afer a 10 minute search on various websites I found this

The Education (school premises act) 1999 link below

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1999/19990002.htm

Part II tells you all about what washroom provision must be made (I didn't read it) I also love the fact that your pic is taken in a bathroom as well. I think you should not have been made to stay at school.

Reply 14

chipskylark

my school was closed just after the summer holidays because the water was out. haha we had 3 days back then a 4-day weekend. it was awesome.

Reply 15

randomness123

This happened in my secondary school and they kept it open for the first half of the day and at lunch decided to shut it off. :s-smilie:

(They coulda just let us have the day off :P)
Oh and about 3 weeks ago my college had no electricity and none of the hesters would work either so again, they kept us in for half the day and then told us to go home. (again, why wait for half the day to go by?! :angry: