Children at Russell Scott primary school in Tameside, Greater Manchester, still cannot use their playing fields after Carillion was contracted on a £3.6m project to remodel the school seven years ago.

Work began in 2013 and finished in 2015 but the school immediately complained of shoddy workmanship and the fact Carillion had left the field looking like “the Somme”, as headteacher Steve Marsland puts it.

The firm had used the field as an access road during the renovation and when they packed up they left huge craters and such huge quantities of rubble and rubbish that the ground had been raised a metre above where it was before work began. Buried underneath was broken glass, bricks and even an old car engine.

Arguments about repairs rumbled on until January 2018, when Carillion went into liquidation, with no agreement reached over what needed fixing, how much it would cost and who should pay for it.

Now, seven years after children last played on the field, it looks more like a slag heap than anywhere you could play rounders or football. A wire fence separates the school’s 500 pupils from their former playing field, with “Keep Out” and “Danger – Construction Site” signs. “It feels like I’m trapped in a cage,” said Alice, 10. “It’s a disgrace looking out on to a wasteland as a playground,” said Phoebe, 11.

“It used to be stunning,” said Marsland, who has been head for 25 years. “We used to train Tameside boys football team on there, it was perfect. Now we have 500 children crammed on to a tiny playground looking through a fence at this mess.”

So far Tameside council has spent at least £200,000 trying to sort out the playing field and discussions continue on how to make it safe and useable once more. Carillion left behind other headaches for the school, including a ventilation system that Marsland says “just does not work”, as well as a leaky roof and malfunctioning doors and windows.

The council said it continues to support the school and is working directly with them “to address the immediate defects and achieve a long-term solution”.

The local authority used Carillion as its main contractor for building works and is still in negotiations with the firm’s liquidators about money it may owe for services provided. It has spent at least an extra £9.4m finishing projects, including Tameside One, which included a new 7,000 m2 Advanced Skills Centre for Tameside College, a new library, Citizen’s Advice Bureau and Job Centre Plus as well as shops.

Marsland has a message for the Carillion executives who took huge salaries for poorly executed projects: “They have been making money from other people’s misery. The children in our school have never been able to walk on their own playing field. I’d put money on the fact that their children will not have gone through similar.”