Gillotts School campus redevelopment

Date posted: February 14, 2017

Building on our experience of land sale and ‘enabling’ development at The Broxbourne School in Hertfordshire, ArchitecturePLB was recently selected, through an open and highly-competitive OJEU process, to assist Gillotts School in Henley in delivering a comprehensive re-development of their campus.

The school is currently housed in a range of buildings of varying age, condition and quality. Like so many schools, incremental and piece-meal development over many decades had resulted in a poor disposition of facilities and inefficient use of the site. In the absence of alternative funding, the school propose to dispose of surplus playing fields for housing development, allowing much-needed investment in the retained estate.

Our first task has been to validate the extent of disposal by working closely with the school to develop an agreed brief and layout for their external sports facilities. Our detailed understanding of the requirements of the EFA and Sport England, developed over more than thirty years working in the schools sector, has been key to delivering a solution that maximises effective use of the site and hence the potential for land-sale.

Alongside the on-going land negotiations, we are now in the process of developing a detailed sequence for the redevelopment of the rest of campus, allowing implementation of the masterplan over a number of construction phases to minimise disruption and allow the ongoing delivery of the curriculum throughout.