Property group Eddisons, which is headquartered in Leeds, has project managed the £1.9m refurbishment of new dining areas, toilet blocks and classrooms at Millthorpe school, a 1,000-student York high school run by South Bank Academy Trust.
The project has upgraded and modernised outdated areas of the school as well as freeing up the circulation of students and staff through the building by reconfiguring areas where bottlenecks were creating logistical problems and causing lengthy lunchtime queues.
A new external covered dining area, the refurbishment and extension of the existing dining room, upgraded toilet blocks and refurbished teaching areas were all included in the scheme which took Eddisons four months to complete once work began on site this summer.
Declan Williams, a building surveyor with Eddisons’ 60-strong specialist education team, which works with school and college academy trusts to secure government funding for improvement projects and sees them through to completion, said: “We have been working with South Bank Academy Trust for four years after being approached to carry out the initial condition survey.
“Circulation was identified as being a major issue that was disrupting the school day and that was one of our main challenges, to reconfigure the way people travel around the entire school.”
He added: “We have had excellent feedback from the school who have told us that both staff and pupils are enjoying the more orderly atmosphere and increased capacity to serve more people at lunchtimes. Some of the new, modern space we have created is multifunctional so that it can be used either as a dining room or as a teaching area, which has been particularly useful for maximising the space available.”
Millthorpe School, which is in the South Bank area of York, is expected to grow in student numbers in the coming years as nearby new housing developments at the Civil Service and British Sugar are developed. The £1.9m refurbishment project was funded by City of York Council.
Eddisons carried out the initial survey into the condition of the school buildings, as well as providing architectural and design services for the £1.9m project and project managing the construction of the new areas.
