Single site for Lord Bill’s school a step closer?

A DESIGN brief for the development of the Lord Williams’s Lower school site, as presented by the school’s Headteacher and a planning consultant, has been approved by Thame Town Council.

A larger, single site Lord Williams’s School, planned for the Oxford Road (upper school) site, will, the school believes….’ enable better educational outcomes and will remove the need for teachers to commute between sites. Teachers will have their own classrooms, there will be daily contact between pupils and tutors, increased learning time with a broader more creative curriculum and older students will be able to work with younger students’.

The plan was for the funds generated through the sale of the Lower School Site to be used to fund the relocation of the Lower School to the Upper School Site at Oxford Road, but it now appears there may be a shortfall in funds to realise the development of the single site school at Oxford Road.

The design as presented shows 135 dwellings, the retention of the existing Sports hall, and the demolition of the Phoenix Drama Studio. There are also public green spaces shown on in the plan. However, according to Alex Bond of the consultants Lampro, delivering the statutory 40% of affordable houses, would make the scheme ‘non-viable’ and that it could only be viable by increasing the number of dwellings and building them to a higher density than allowed for in the Thame Neighbourhood Plan.

Mr Bond told councillors that the majority of people who responded to a recent public consultation on the scheme expressed a preference for less affordable homes as apposed to more houses. Cllr Linda Emery expressed concern that the council was being asked to accept a reduction in the number of affordable housing. Mr Bond responded that it was difficult to be certain about the viability question while no costed scheme for the single school site at Upper School in Oxford Road, Thame, was yet available to way against the cost of the lower school scheme.

Mr Wybron pointed out that if the community did not get behind the scheme, because ‘the clock is ticking’ towards 2021 when planning needs to be secured, the scheme might not happen (The time limit on the lower school housing allocation site (HA5) is set in the Neighbourhood Plan and if it doesn’t happen by 2021, the site will have to be relocated in the revised Thame Neighbourhood Plan currently being formulated).

You can view the Design Brief document by downloading it from item 6B HERE