Planning matters

Amongst the myriad ministerial announcements pre-empting (and eventually included within) the recent Budget, was a government pledge of a further £1.4 billion to meet a target of rebuilding 50 schools in England per year. Against a backdrop of pressure on the public finances, Labour was also in part responding to concerns that only 23 of more than 500 schools on the School Rebuilding Programme have been completed so far by ambitiously ramping up progress towards 50 rebuilds per year’. [1]

Launched by the previous government in 2021, the School Rebuilding Programme carries out major rebuilding and refurbishment projects on school and sixth form college buildings across England, with buildings prioritised according to their condition.[2] Whilst perhaps not at the pace anticipated by some pundits, the Programme is delivering and, as of the September 2024 term, Lichfields has obtained planning permission for new campuses for Whitley Bay High School and Farringdon Community Academy in the North East of England, working with the Department for Education as part of a well-established team led by contractor BAM Construction and Ryder Architecture.

Whilst it is therefore clearly promising that new additional funding should see the Programme accelerated, its remit is currently focused solely on the most dilapidated existing school premises. This is understandable from both a political and financial perspective, but Lichfields’ work across the planning system, and our understanding of the current agenda for reform (as reported elsewhere on these pages), suggests that the government’s aspirations for a step change in terms of housing delivery and Local Plan adoption will also have major implications for the nation’s school provision.

Fundamentally, the Department for Education (DfE) is responsible for ensuring that there are sufficient new school places to meet local needs, whilst the government is also driving forward an ambitious housing agenda to increase housing delivery, home ownership and the creation of new communities. The relationship between infrastructure provision (including high quality school places) and new housing delivery is critical in meeting these objectives in a sustainable manner.

In August 2023, the previous government updated its non-statutory guidance on delivering school places to support housing growth. A key aspect of this was the publication of a new methodology to assist in estimating pupil yield from housing developments[3]. This is intended to assist local authorities in developing and applying long-term evidence of pupil yield from housing developments, to inform local plans and planning decisions, and justify developer contributions towards education. With significant planned increases in Local Plan housing targets required to achieve the government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes over this parliament, the system is, however, sure to be stretched.

To some extent, a healthy, functioning system of Local Plan preparation would ensure this problem takes care of itself. As mentioned above, Lichfields has worked alongside contractors such as BAM Construction on a number of new projects under the DfE’s existing School Rebuilding Programme, including securing planning permission in January 2023 for the redevelopment of Farringdon Community Academy in Sunderland. This development is an excellent example of the DfE’s funding programmes and pupil yield data working in tandem with an up-to-date Local Plan to deliver a state-of-the-art new facility for the City’s existing and future communities. The development involved the demolition of most of the existing main school buildings and the construction of a new state-of-the-art teaching block and a swimming pool; providing over 10,000 m² of new accommodation.

At feasibility stage, the DfE identified aspirations within the City’s recently adopted development plan for significant housing growth in the local area. Specifically, the ‘South Sunderland Growth Area’ (SSGA) was identified as a target for growth and a priority for housing and economic development, with aspirations for a new sustainable community to the south-east of the school site. Within the SSGA, development is expected to deliver approximately 3000 new homes, including 10% affordable housing. As a result, the new school proposals sought to accommodate a Published Admissions Number of 60 additional pupils per year to future-proof the scheme for planned housing growth. New housing and schools play a fundamental role in supporting the health and wellbeing of communities, and with the opening of the Community Academy in September, the new accommodation provides much needed modern and fit-for-purpose teaching facilities to deliver the highest performance standards for generations to come.[4]

Much rests on the publication of the government’s revised National Planning Policy Framework (still anticipated later this year) and its instruction to local planning authorities to upscale their ambitions in relation to housing delivery. The draft NPPF in July also instructed stakeholders to “give great weight to the need to create, expand or alter early years, schools and post 16 facilities through the preparation of plans and decisions on applications” and, teamed with a significant and welcome boost to the finances of the School Rebuilding Programme, there remains hope this can be realised.

Please get in touch with Lichfields’ Health and Education team if there are any points raised in this blog which you would like to discuss or are perhaps relevant to your own projects or Local Plans. You can see the full range of our recent education projects within our Sector Guide (Education Sector Guide).