Faulty towers: Whitehall loses its grip on the £400bn business of buying

Whether it's doors for high-security schools or windows for jails, bureaucrats accused of bungling orders

- Rachel Sylvester

Britain's first secure school for young offenders opened in Kent in August last year. Oasis Restore was trialling a new approach to youth custody that put the emphasis on education and therapeutic care rather than punishment and retribution. There were bedrooms instead of cells and teachers, not guards.

Politicians from all parties welcomed the groundbreaking facility. Criminal justice experts described it as a vital alternative to violent and dysfunctional young offender institutions.

Then, six months after it started taking pupils, the school discovered the doors installed by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) were faulty. Oasis Restore was housing some of the most complex, dangerous and damaged young people in the country, including murderers, rapists, drug dealers and gang members. Security was crucial, but the teenagers were able to kick through the doors.

Staff found themselves standing in doorways as human barriers to try to maintain order. Pupils started carrying makeshift weapons - including shards of wood from the shattered doors - for their own protection.

In March, the MoJ said it would replace more than 180 doors, at an estimated cost of almost £3m. The procurement team promised stronger doors would be installed by the middle of May. Then it was by June, then July. But they never materialised.

Eventually, in August, Oasis, the charity that runs the school, decided that the only responsible thing to do was to shut the facility until the safety of pupils and staff could be guaranteed. "The sense of frustration is huge - we didn't design the doors, we didn't fit the doors," said Steve Chalke, the founder.

The pupils have "gone to a series of young offender institutions, which is a completely different environment. I sit at home thinking about the faces of those children, the trust that existed between us and the way in which the system has failed them."