St Neck-olas brings gifts to Park’s giraffes
AN £11 million primary school will be built in Bishop’s Cleeve after civic chiefs gave its funding the go-ahead.
It will open to 60 reception pupils in 2023 and will expand in line with projected housing growth to teach 630 local children by 2030, Gloucestershire County Council said.
It is not yet known where the new school will be built, but Councillor Patrick Molyneux said at a county council meeting last week that the development would be in the north of the village.
He said this was because of the number of houses that had been built there in recent years, as well as development planned for the future.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has previously reported that the authority was exploring whether to add 630 primary school places to Cleeve School, a secondary college and sixth form college.
But some residents, and the parish council, had recommended the building of a primary school at Northenham allotments, in Evesham Road, in the north of the village.
The county council said it had set aside £8m for primary places in Bishop’s Cleeve as part of a £100m investment, but a further £3m had been added to fund the project and buy the land to build the school on.
The new purpose-built school would be carbon neutral, the authority said.
Councillor Molyneux said at last week’s meeting: “Bishop’s Cleeve has been identified as needing additional school places due to the amount of development that has taken place, and is also due to take place in the very near future.
“We identified within our school strategy 2018 that a new school was needed in the Bishop’s Cleeve area. We initially went out and consulted with all the local schools and local leaders and representatives, first of all to look at where we could extend the current school provision to absorb the need. That was quickly exhausted, and we did feel the need to actually build a new school.
“So we then looked at where that could be located, and a site was found on Cleeve Secondary School that could accommodate a three-forms-of-entry primary school, and that would then create an all-through school in Cleeve.”
He said there was a problem with this because the council had made a “firm case” that school places should be provided near to where there was demand for them.
“Unfortunately, Cleeve School is on the opposite side of Bishop’s Cleeve from where much of the development is going to occur, which is in the north,” he added.