Bidding war sees ex-school sold for £281,500

A MYSTERY buyer has snapped up a former primary school after a last-minute bidding war saw the value rocket more than £100,000 over the guide price.

Bidding for St Anthony’s School, in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean, started off slow with a single offer of £160,000 on the first day.

But by the end of the second day 191 bids had been placed for the school, which was being advertised with “huge potential,” to be converted into a highdensity residential scheme.

Now a question mark hangs over the future of the former free school which closed 18 months ago after the Department for Education invested around £1 million making it safe for pupils.

The person who opened the bidding at just under the guide price of £165,000 was left disappointed after losing out seconds before the hammer went down.

Interest looked non-existent and then slow on the first day of the auction on Wednesday, February 3.

But by teatime on Thursday there were eight people bidding against each other in quick succession.

Things really started hotting up after bidder eight entered the fray with £183,000 at 6.23pm and the price went up rapidly over the next 20 minutes.

Bidder one made a final play for the school at 6.43pm on Thursday with a bid of £281,000 but within a few seconds bidder eight had upped their offer by £500.

Bidder eight secured the school for £281,500.

A spokesman for Paul Fosh Auctions said the company does not reveal the identity of buyers or sellers.

The site was sold through Dean Estate Agents in Cinderford and looks set to be used for housing.

Staff and parents mounted a very public campaign to save the small school which had twice been branded inadequate by Ofsted.

But their claims that headteacher Lorna Middleton, pictured, who started three months before the closure was announced, had turned things around fell on deaf ears and there were tears during the final assembly in July 2018.

DOWNING Street has insisted its hotel quarantine policy is “in line” with other countries, despite being warned by an Australian epidemiologist that allowing travellers to leave their room for fresh air is “very risky”.

Professor Michael Toole, from the Burnet Institute in

Melbourne, Victoria, said rules in Australia had to be strengthened to reduce the chance of airborne transmission - suggesting England should adopt similar measures. He said there have been Covid-19 cases in the city where an infected guest opened their room door and “with the positive pressure, this kind of fog of virus went out into the corridor, travelled down and infected hotel staff”. Asked for his views on people being allowed to leave their rooms in England’s quarantine hotels while accompanied by guards, he said: “We’ve learnt that that is a very risky procedure.”

UK nationals or residents returning to England from 33 “red list” countries will be required to spend 10 days in a Governmentdesignated hotel from Monday but, unlike in Australia, they will be allowed to leave their rooms for fresh air.