New £26m building for The Broxbourne School

Date posted: February 3, 2017

ArchitecturePLB has been working with The Broxbourne School (TBS), and Cornerstone as ‘broker’, on the comprehensive redevelopment of their site in Hertfordshire. This will provide a brand new £26m school building and new external amenity and sports facilities which will be entirely funded by a residential development on surplus school land.

The school is currently housed in tired, life-expired 1950s and 1960s buildings which provide inefficient and inadequate accommodation. Originally earmarked for BSF investment, TBS is not prioritised for EFA funding and has therefore pursued a Schedule 1 sale of part of its estate.

In this case, the most appropriate area for residential use is that currently occupied by the existing school buildings. It is therefore necessary to construct the new school first, on part of the playing fields, prior to developing the bulk of the new residential area. ArchitecturePLB has been involved from the outset of the project, originally as part of the Hertfordshire Schools Building Partnership for whom we have delivered 15 new and expansion projects with two further ongoing. When this route proved unsuccessful, we introduced the school to Cornerstone whom we knew from previous schools work.

Our appointment comprises two elements – full design services for the new school and feasibility / concept design for the 153-dwelling residential development. A hybrid planning consent comprising detailed design for the school and outline design for the residential development was granted in September 2016. As part of the outline application for the residential area we developed design codes for three different ‘character zones’ within the development, part of which lies within a Conservation Area. While the means of access is approved in detail, the design codes establish planning-acceptable design principles for the layout, scale, appearance and landscape.