Replacement for school's tents after concrete crisis

A NEW temporary school block could soon be built to replace the tents which children at Clevedon School have been taught in for almost two years.

- JOHN WIMPERIS

Councillors on North Somerset Council’s planning committee will vote tomorrow on whether to grant planning permission for a 24-classroom teaching block at Clevedon School.

It will mean that the children can finally be moved out of the two marquees where their classes have been located since (High Alumina Cement) HAC was discovered in the school building, meaning it is structurally unsafe.

Planning officials at the council are recommending that the plan be approved. The new block is not a permanent solution: it is a temporary two-storey block of classrooms which will be used for four years while a proper new school building is built.

It has been welcomed by parents anxious to see their children out of the tents they have been taught in - but not everyone is happy.

Lodging a supporting comment on the planning application, one parent wrote: "This is desperately needed so that children don't have to be educated in tents anymore. They are freezing in the winter, sweltering in the summer and not sound-proof so lessons are disrupted by noise from the next classroom!"