School rebuilding programme creates thousands of city jobs

A triple partnership of companies responsible for delivering most of the city’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme has reached financial close on schemes to deliver three more new schools as work to transform the city’s educational facilities nears the end of its first stage.

It means the partnership will have created more than 7,000 jobs in the city across its various sites – on top of 3,500 posts created under BSF by Balfour Beatty, which is also working on the programme.

The latest announcement, by Hull Esteem Consortium, which consists of Morgan Sindall Investments, Robertson Capital Projects and Hull-based Sewell Group, will see £64.5m of investment across three sites where new schools will be built to replace Kingswood College of Arts (1,200 jobs), Andrew Marvell Business and Enterprise College (1,300 jobs) and Oakfield special school (650 jobs).

They are due to open in January 2013, while work by the partnership advances at a pace on new schools to replace the existing buildings at Winifred Holtby secondary and Tweendykes special school (2,000 jobs), and Archbishop Sentamu Academy (2,000 jobs) ahead of their opening in September. Also due to open on that date are two of the new schools in the newly created West Hull Learning Village – Sirius Academy and Ganton special school – while the newly formed West Hull Primary School, which will be an amalgamation of Tilbury and Bethune primaries, will open in September 2012.

These are being delivered by Balfour Beatty, which is also building the new Kelvin Hall secondary, due to open in April 2012.

Sam Whitaker, general manager at Hull Esteem Consortium, said: “The city’s Building Schools for the Future programme is really starting to have an impact across the city now, not just on the physical landscape but also on the local economy. The opportunities presented by such a massive regeneration project are very rare so it is crucial that we capitalise on this once in a generation chance to really push Hull forward.

“This latest milestone will allow us to further demonstrate our commitment to providing jobs for local people whilst at the same time delivering three fantastic new and aspirational schools.”

Pauline Davis, corporate director for regeneration at Hull Council, said: “This is excellent news for the BSF programme and for the city; it means we have further huge investment in Hull’s school buildings which will ensure we have new facilities across the city aimed at transforming teaching and learning.

“The designs for Andrew Marvell, Kingswood and Oakfield are very exciting and I am confident that they will provide outstanding facilities for students and teachers alike and also for the benefit of the wider community.”

The second and final phase of the city’s BSF programme will see major refurbishments of Newland School For Girls, St Mary’s secondaries, while Trinity House may be moving to a new building.

Although Hull was one of a few BSF schemes across the country to survive Government spending cuts, it was told in March it would have to cut £21m cut from its £400m BSF budget. The savings were agreed after it was told to make “efficiency savings” by the coalition Government, which inherited the scheme from Labour.

The council will lose five per cent of the funding for schools in the first phase and 20 per cent of funding for phase two schools.

Gordon Ray, regional managing director at Morgan Sindall, added: “We have a permanent presence in Hull and a strong, multi-discipline team.

“We’re committed to opening up more opportunities for the local supply chain and playing an active role in the long term development of the region both through this project and future opportunities outside of the BSF programme.”