Decision on new building planned for Leicestershire school will see nearly 100 extra pupils a year

Plans for a new building at a county school which needs to expand to accommodate the 100 extra pupils needed a year will be decided this week. Iveshead School in Shepshed currently has an “approved intake number” of 150 new pupils each year, but this academic year has agreed to take 210.

This number is expected to rise again to 240 in the 2025/26 academic year. Due to new housing construction west of Loughborough, where 2,440 new homes are due to be delivered by 2028, there is expected to be a large shortage of pupil places if nothing changes, according to Leicestershire County Council.

However, the current school building has a capacity of only 950 students and as of September 2023 there were 943 students. The county council, which is the local education authority, submitted a two-phase plan to expand the school late last year.

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Now the council’s planning committee is to rule on part of that plan – the creation of a new two-storey teaching block. This would include 10 new classrooms, a library, three seminar rooms, a media studies room with an audiovisual suite and a post-16 centre, as well as offices, toilets and a staff room.

The new building is expected to be located on one side of the playing field. Council officers have advised councilors to approve the scheme when they meet tomorrow, Thursday 30 May.

The council has previously revealed that changes are also proposed to the current school building, which would see the existing dance studio and changing rooms converted into general education classrooms, computer rooms upgraded and a “food service booth” installed. These changes are not considered part of this application.

Concerns have been raised by Shepshed Town Council, county councilor for the area Christine Radford and a handful of residents about the current entrance to the site. The local council said this was already “getting very busy”.

Councilor Radford said: “(I) am asking the county to look at access to the site as it is at the top of a hill with a narrow entrance to the campus which serves not just this school but others.” She added that when children are dropped off in the car park behind the school, they currently have to “go over either wet grass or mud” or walk down the road “which doesn’t have a footpath to let the children access at school. on a dangerous path”. She asked the council to look at creating a new pathway for them.

The county council, which is also the local highways authority, said widening the entrance to the school could make the area more dangerous for pedestrians. Any added traffic lights would “restrict pavement space”, the authority added, and could have the effect of “discouraging walking and cycling”.

Furthermore, Councilor Radford’s proposed new path was deemed “either impossible or unreasonable”. Ultimately, the council said it was “satisfied” the plan “will not have an unacceptable impact on the motorway network”.

Sports England also raised concerns about the loss of playing fields to make way for the new building. The body opposed the scheme.

The council agreed that the loss of playing fields “should be avoided wherever possible”. It added that it had evaluated a number of locations for the new building, but all would have resulted in some loss of open space. It said it chose the proposed location, “despite the most significant loss of playing fields”, because it offered “the greatest connectivity” to existing teaching areas and meant “building work and traffic can be managed without affecting the experience of student learning”.

In response to Sports England’s concerns, the plan was reworked to bring another area of ​​grassland, currently “redundant”, into use as a football pitch. A sports equipment store and changing rooms are also proposed for below, but for financial reasons these cannot be built at present.

The council also said it would be happy to enter into a community agreement so that local residents could also benefit from the new land. Taking this into account, the new teaching block would only result in the loss of 50 square meters of playing space, the authority added.

Sports England has been consulted on the revised plan but had not provided a response at the time of publication of the meeting documents. If the group maintains its objection and the council approves the plan, the authority will have to refer the application to the Government to see if it wants to make its own decision on the scheme.