NDTScan carries out RAAC surveys in Harrogate for schools, hospitals, councils, housing providers, universities and commercial owners. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete was used in roofs, floors and walls from the late 1950s to the mid 1990s, and a great deal of it is still in service across North Yorkshire. NDTScan is the UK's specialist in identifying it, assessing it and telling an owner plainly what to do next.
The Department for Education's list of education settings with confirmed RAAC, published in February 2024, includes one setting in North Yorkshire, among them Scalby School. The Department of Health and Social Care's list of hospital sites with confirmed RAAC includes Scarborough General Hospital, Harrogate Hospital and James Cook Hospital in North Yorkshire. York Castle Museum has also been publicly reported as containing RAAC. Those are the buildings that made the published lists, which cover schools, colleges and NHS sites. They are named here as evidence that the construction is present in North Yorkshire, not as NDTScan projects. Around Harrogate the same roof and floor planks are in council buildings, housing, leisure centres, retail units and industrial sheds that nobody has counted.
The method NDTScan uses in Harrogate is the one it uses everywhere: identify first, then assess. Ground penetrating radar reads the plank's internal structure without cutting into it, distinguishing RAAC from the dense precast, hollowcore and timber it is often mistaken for. Every confirmed plank is then inspected for the defects that matter, cracking, deflection, short bearing, water damage, corrosion and earlier repairs, and classified in line with IStructE guidance. The Harrogate owner receives a plank-level record, not a general opinion.
The most expensive mistake in Harrogate, as everywhere else, is to act on RAAC before it has been understood. Whole buildings have been closed on the strength of a visual inspection that could not tell RAAC from hollowcore. NDTScan's position is that identification and condition assessment come first, remediation second, and the report has to be good enough to design from.
Scan before you repair. That is the standing advice for every Harrogate client, and the reason NDTScan reports what the concrete contains before anyone specifies what to do about it.
Services Available in Harrogate
- RAAC Identification Survey GPR based, plank by plank identification of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in roofs, floors and walls across Harrogate. Confirms what the element is made of without opening it up, and records plank widths, reinforcement and bearing details as evidence.
- RAAC Condition Assessment Plank level inspection of confirmed RAAC for cracking, deflection, bearing length, water ingress, corrosion and previous repairs, classified in line with IStructE guidance. Reported so a North Yorkshire engineer or estates team can act on it directly.
- RAAC Management and Reinspection Monitoring regimes, reinspection intervals and management plans for RAAC that is being kept in service, plus expert input where a Harrogate owner needs an independent second opinion on a survey or a remediation proposal.
RAAC in and around Harrogate
Typical Harrogate instructions: RAAC identification in schools, halls, clinics and council buildings built between 1955 and 1995; plank by plank condition assessment of confirmed RAAC roofs and floors; risk classification in line with IStructE guidance to support decisions on closure, propping or continued use; reinspection and monitoring of managed RAAC; and independent review of surveys and remediation proposals for North Yorkshire owners and their insurers. NDTScan covers Harrogate from Oxford in the same way it covers the rest of England.
NDTScan also provides RAAC surveys in Middlesbrough, York, Scarborough, Redcar, Eston and Selby and the rest of North Yorkshire. The rest of the region is covered from the Yorkshire and The Humber RAAC surveys page, and the service itself is described on the RAAC surveys page.
About NDTScan
NDTScan is a specialist non-destructive testing company based in Oxford and led by Neil Smuts, author of The RAAC Book. It is the UK's specialist in the identification and analysis of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, and a Level 4 UKCSS Operator, the first in the UK to achieve that certification. RAAC surveys in Harrogate sit alongside the company's concrete scanning and structural condition survey work, and every report is written to a standard suitable for engineering acceptance, insurers and dispute work.