Demolition contractors to take down school in April 2012
Demolition contractors are to begin work next April on taking down a senior school in Stoke-on-Trent, to allow work to begin on the region's £261 million education reorganisation programme.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council have said that they want to raze Longton High, in Meir, as soon as possible after the remaining pupils and staff transfer from the campus in September this year. A lengthy permission process, however, means that they will not be able to start work until April 2012.
The council has said they are still pleased to be making progress and will sell the site of the school on to private developers in order to raise proceeds for their Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme.
Tracy Penrose-Gould, the project director of BSF, said that they were not planning on having a hand in the long-term future of the Longton site, but said they would be working with developers.
"We don't know what the Longton site will be used for in the long term," she said. "But we are retaining the playing fields for community use."
The council has explained that it wants to keep pupil disruption to a minimum while the 18 separate BSF school building projects get underway. Most of the new academies or special schools being built are either on new sites or are being constructed alongside existing school buildings.
