IT IS perfectly safe to reopen a Valleys school closed over asbestos fears, an expert told MPs.

David Ashton, director of the field operations directorate at the Health and Safety Executive, told members of an education select committee at the House of Commons that the actual level of harm at Cwmcarn High School was lower than previous tests had shown.

He said there was a general problem with asbestos in a lot of UK schools, but said it could be dealt with by some “fairly mundane” acts of management and routine preventative action, as advised by the HSE’s Control of Asbestos regulations.

He said electron microscopy tests carried out by the Health and Safety Laboratory at Cwmcarn were more sophisticated than earlier sampling, which initially suggested there was a high level of risk there.

He told MPs at the meeting earlier this month: “We did electron microscopy in that school [Cwmcarn], and our advice to the local authority there is that it is perfectly safe to re-open that school because the actual levels, by that more sophisticated method, were at the limits of measurable quantification.”

The school was closed in October after a report by Santia Asbestos Ltd detected airborne asbestos fibres in ceiling voids.

But two subsequent reports by the Health and Safety Laboratory and a company called Ensafe agree the risk is much lower.

A management report by Ensafe completed earlier this month said children and teachers, currently being taught in alternative accommodation in Ebbw Vale, could return to the site in temporary classrooms while asbestos is removed from the affected buildings at a total cost of £962,375.08.

Emergency funding for the work was refused by the Welsh Government, so parents who set up the Save Cwmcarn campaign group have taken it upon themselves to launch a Sponsor a Brick campaign so they can pay for the work themselves.

A spokesman for Caerphilly County Borough Council said: “We have requested a meeting with the HSE to discuss their position. In the meantime we are preparing a report for consideration by councillors on options for the future of the site as we are keen to agree a way forward as soon as possible.”