An ‘outstanding’ Bolton primary school has been given the go-ahead for a new building to help expand one of its most popular programmes.
This comes after council officials decided to approve Blackrod Primary School’s plan to build a new temporary modular classroom building, which will be used to host extra-curricular and other activities.
The entire school is on greenbelt land, but planning officers felt that the special circumstances were strong enough to let the building work go ahead.
Cllr David Grant, who also chairs the children’s’ service scrutiny committee said: “I whole-heatedly support this, the morning and after school club at Blackrod Primary School is hugely popular.
“The addition and extension of this facility or the facilities that they offer may in fact alleviate some of the parking issues that we’re having as well.
“So I would therefore move approval.”
Parents and others had previously raised concerns about parking in the area, with an expanded pre and after school club likely to help stagger the flow of children into and out the site at rush hour.
The new building will be entirely within the grounds of the existing school and Bolton Council officials confirmed that no objections had been received either from Blackrod residents or from any official bodies.
These including Environmental Health, Highways Engineering and Sport England who all reported no objections to the scheme.
Blackrod Town Council had also supported the idea but noted that since the building involved children would appear to be made of wood, recommended that the application include a fire statement.
Blackrod Primary School is currently rated as ‘outstanding’ across all areas after its most recent Ofsted inspection and the expansion will allow more space for the school to carry it its ‘All-Stars’ pre and after school club, which has a membership of around 180 pupils.
It has also recently expanded to allow it to take in 315 pupils, with the possibility to go up further still to 339.
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This means that many of these children and their parents are likely to look for opportunities to join clubs like these, but space is currently restricted to an area of the school’s main building.
The new modular building will allow for much more space to accommodate a growing number of pupils.
Bolton Council’s planning committee voted unanimously to approve the plan.
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