- INTRODUCTION
Banbury
School is a secondary school for pupils aged 11 – 18 and currently provides
the 6th Form provision for Banbury Town and the Warriner Schools catchment
that covers Bloxham and rural North Oxfordshire.
Banbury
School was created by the amalgamation of the Stanbridge Grammar School
and Wykham and Broughton Secondary Modern Schools in the mid 1960’s.
Stanbridge Hall no longer meets current educational requirements and
its distance from the heart of the school causes significant student,
teacher and staff travelling time resulting in lost teaching and learning
time.
The
County Council and the School see the replacement of Stanbridge Hall
with a new building at the heart of the campus as the key to creating
a more coherent school environment that will have a significant impact
in raising educational achievement.
In
order to facilitate the scheme it is necessary for the County Council
to declare surplus to requirements an area of up to I hectare (2.47
acres) of the existing Stanbridge Hall site and it is proposed that
approval for this is given as part of this project approval.
The
scheme has the full support of staff and the School’s Governing Body
and meets the objectives of the County Council's Corporate Plan.
- DESCRIPTION
OF PROJECT
The
project will replace the existing accommodation in Stanbridge Hall by
providing teaching accommodation, teaching support spaces and associated
facilities including a replacement dining hall all in line with Oxfordshire’s
Secondary School Brief. The new building will provide faculty accommodation
for Humanities, Modern Foreign Languages and Business Studies together
with general teaching classrooms.
The
accommodation will be provided in two 2-storey linked blocks and comprises
the equivalent of 28 teaching classrooms, Upper School reception, offices
for Vice Principal, Heads of Year and support staff, storage and pupil
and staff toilets together with a new dining hall and social area located
adjacent to the existing kitchen.
The
scheme includes hard paved and landscaped areas around the building,
provision of car parking spaces to replace ‘lost’ spaces together with
drainage and services.
The
project will provide a fully accessible building for all users and will
thereby, address accessibility issues that exist with the current Stanbridge
Hall building.
- JUSTIFICATION
AND ASSESSMENT OF NEED
The
Stanbridge Hall was built 80 years ago as a Grammar School to deliver
a limited academic curriculum to a small selective percentage of the
population and a suitability assessment based on the current Education
Asset Management Plan guidelines shows that all the classrooms, dining,
reception and library are below the recommended size. The size, shape
and organisation of these spaces make delivery of the curriculum difficult
and long, narrow corridors lead to behavioural problems. There is a
lack of teaching ‘break-out’ areas and social areas. The location of
the building on the extreme end of the campus results in lost teaching
and learning time because of the long travel distances. This raises
additional security, supervision and health and safety issues. The building
fabric is in poor condition and has a high repairs and maintenance liability.
The repairs and maintenance assessed need totals approximately £900,000.
The
new building will provide a more coherent, centralised set of ‘state
of the art’ classrooms and associated accommodation located within the
main school gates. The building will continue the site development plan
by ‘filling the gap’ left after the demolition of part of Wykham Hall
during the NDS4 development of science and technology in 2001/02.
The
project will enhance the school by providing modern facilities as replacement
of substandard and outdated accommodation and will have a significant
impact upon the educational achievement of all students at the school.
The new building will be built to the latest DfES guidelines incorporating
new educational technologies to facilitate the current curriculum and
teaching strategies. The central campus location will significantly
reduce both student and staff movement between buildings and this will
result in a corresponding increase in teaching and learning time.
This
strategy is considered the best option to meet the long term academic
vision for Banbury School, it will help to improve educational standards,
it will cause minimal disruption to the school during construction and
will achieve best value by use of the available capital receipt.
There
will be revenue savings due to the school using new buildings and there
will be a reduction in repairs and maintenance liabilities.
- OTHER OPTIONS
Various
options have been considered to upgrade the existing Stanbridge Hall
building as follows:
- do nothing
except basic decoration – a low cost option but would fail to
address suitability and condition issues.
- substantially
upgrade and internally adapt the whole building – internal adaptation
would result in the loss of classrooms and consequent need to
provide a new build six classroom extension. In view of the limited
life of the existing building and expected high whole life costs,
it is not considered viable to use the existing building.
- retain the
front block and demolish and replace with new build behind – this
would represent only 70% of the ideal physical solution. There
would be significant decant costs to be added to the new build
cost without any supporting capital receipt. The school would
suffer significant disruption during the building period.
- retain the
‘portico’ with demolition and new build of the remainder – this
would achieve 90% of the physical solution but with a higher building
cost compared to straight replacement. Other costs as Option 3.
None
of the options address the over-riding location issues, nor the School
and LEA’s vision to develop the principle of a coherent campus with
more centralised accommodation that in turn will have an impact on raising
educational achievement.
Options
for the disposal of the Stanbridge Hall site have been the subject of
extensive consultation with Cherwell District Council. The preferred
option was for the site to be transferred to Social and Community Services
and Oxford Care Partnership to provide the site for an elderly persons
home. After considerable option analysis above and negotiation, Cherwell
District Council could not agree to any affordable options and at the
same time Stanbridge Hall was placed on the District Council’s List
of Buildings of Local Historic Interest for Banbury. This has significantly
delayed the project incurring increased costs. Although there is no
requirement to retain the Stanbridge Hall building as a freestanding
building, this has caused a greater uncertainty in the potential capital
receipt. The importance of this project for the development of secondary
education in Banbury, despite the objection from the District Council
on the future development of the disposal site, means that, in taking
forward this project, the uncertainty of the capital receipt will place
additional financial pressure on future capital projects.
- FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS