News
30 October 2009
Special school designed with children’s needs in mind
A brand new purpose-built school for children with learning difficulties and autism designed by Pick Everard has been given the go ahead. Planning permission has been granted for the £5.1million school in Hospital Lane, Mickleover, in Derby, to be built on the site of a former garden centre.
Believed to be the only new facility like it in the UK, the school will cater for children with moderate to severe learning difficulties, autism, challenging behaviour and communication disorders.
Pick Everard has designed the new school for Pendleton Investments Limited, and although permission was initially granted in 2008, the recently approved revised development plan proposes less remodelling of the site’s steep slopes and includes work to the existing office. The main school building will be based on a timber frame construction with three teaching wings opening out onto a large outdoor teaching space. A glazed link will join teaching facilities with a sports hall, swimming pool, adjacent courts and sports pitches and a running track. Higher up on the site, residential accommodation for 36 children aged between five and seventeen will be provided in six houses designed around a courtyard, with adjacent staff and visitor parking spaces. Externally the palette will be a combination of white render and vertical cedar cladding with plinths of brickwork. The sustainable drainage design has also been approved by the local authority and environment agency. The garden centre that previously occupied the site has now been demolished. Construction starts in January 2010 and the school will open in January 2011. The main contractor will be Nottinghamshire firm Wood Newton Limited.
David Brooks, project architect at Pick Everard, said: “We’re delighted that planning approval has been given for the revised scheme.”
Simon Brook, director, Pendleton Investments explains, “The school’s pioneering approach for improving not only the lives of students but also their families is drawn from best practice in Europe, Japan and North America. An experienced management team has been specifically headhunted and students will come from all over the country to attend.”
Pick Everard designed the new Music and Sixth Form centre at Derby High School that opened this autumn and is currently working on a new business and enterprise centre for the University of Derby.
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Community Benefit category winner at the regional finals of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) Awards 2008
Sustainable Development of the Year Award in the 2008 ProCon Leicestershire Property & Construction Awards
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2007 George Phillips Award and the Leicestershire Joint Consultative Committee 2007 Merit Award for Craftsmanship.
The Round House extension won the Leicestershire & Rutland Society of Architects 2008 President’s Award.
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2 January 2007
Multiple awards to Pick Everard for Stephenson College and Keele University buildings
