The contractor’s latest award is for a new school for St Marylebone CE Bridge School in Westminster.
The five SEND schools that Galliford Try Building Southern now has on its books total more than £50m in value.
The St Marylebone school is a co-educational Church of England special free school for statemented pupils aged 11- 16, whose primary needs are related to their speech, language and communication. A new three-storey main building will house up to 70 pupils, sharing the site of the Wilberforce Primary School in West Kilburn.
Following completion of Cleeve Meadow School for the London Borough of Bexley, the Building Southern team has now also been selected through the Department of Education framework to design and build Cornerstone School, again in Bexley, on behalf of the Trinitas Academy Trust. This school will provide places for 90 pupils with special educational needs or disabilities.
This is on top of two more recent awards of three other SEND schools across Greater London. The Avenue, in the London Borough of Brent, is a school for 104 children with autism. The school site is constrained and so architect Pozzoni has come up with a design incorporating sports facilities on third-level roof terraces.
Construction is already under way at Meadow High School in Hillingdon, with a refurbishment and construction of a new main block building catering for 255 pupils aged 11-19 years who have been designated as having complex and moderate learning difficulties with autism.
Finally, in Dorset, Galliford Try Building Southern is constructing a new home for The Harbour School, which opened in temporary accommodation in September 2019. The new school building, which is due to open in January 2022 will see pupils with social emotional and mental health needs and autistic spectrum conditions housed within the same campus. Although central facilities and specialist teaching rooms will be shared, the two groups will have separate circulation and different zones for learning, effectively creating two school in one.
Claire Jackson, education director for Galliford Try, said: “Building SEND schools is fast becoming a speciality for our business, and we are delighted to be working on each one of these projects. SEND schools often require innovative solutions to respond to end user requirements and as a team we have developed a real understanding of how to create holistic educational settings.”
Gavin Bridge, managing director of Galliford Try Building Southern, said: “Our business has built a fantastic order book in the education sector across the south, and particularly in SEND schools. We look forward to working with all the stakeholders involved in all of these much-needed projects to deliver the high-quality facilities that the students deserve.”
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