MORE than £1m will be put towards expanding a York school and changing the route into the grounds.

Senior councillors agreed the local authority should put £500,000 towards improving parts of the school building so that 30 extra pupils per year group can be accepted, from September.

The work will include relocating the reception area and some changing rooms, extending existing classrooms and refurbishing the toilets.

And two temporary classrooms would also be brought back into use.

The lunch hour would also be split to create two sittings - and a council report says this could help with social distancing when schools reopen.

A further £550,000 will be used to improve routes to and from the school. The report says this is likely to see school buses entering the site from a new road from the Germany Beck site and exiting the grounds by Fulfordgate to the north.

Amanda Hatton, the council's education director, said: "Across York clearly schooling and plans for schooling in the pandemic are still uncertain and we're not sure yet when schools will reopen.

"Even if we're in a position where we still have a restricted amount of children in school at any given time, the additional classrooms which are suggested in the scheme will allow us to socially distance in school more easily.

"The other aspect of the scheme is in relation to travel and making the site safer for children to be dropped off at school and collected."

The report says the coronavirus crisis is "likely to cause delays" to the project.

Cllr Ian Cuthbertson said: "Pressure on places in the south side of the city has been building for some years now and it's been an issue for the Fulford district and its school catchment area for a while."

"The situation is influenced by economic development, by new housing developments and the popularity of particular schools.

"The issue of access to the school via Fulfordgate has been a problem for some time.

"There's a very narrow access to the school entrance along Fulfordgate and limited room to maneuver even at present for visitors to turn around at the school entrance.

"So the proposed access from the south side of the school should ease these problems considerably."

In 2018 the council looked at different possible routes into the grounds - and found that creating a new access road from the Germany Beck development to the south of the site would be the best option.

The study assessed the viability of a number of options and the impact

on congestion in the area and reviewed deliverability against a range of

factors including: planning, land availability, cost, potential delivery

programme and value for money. The study has identified that it would

be possible to significantly reduce the impact of school bus transport on

Fulfordgate and Heslington Lane by implementing changes to the layout

of the school grounds and making use of a new access from the

Germany Beck Development without additional land being required.

AH: “Additional classrooms

IC:

REPORT SAYS:

The current partial closure of schools created by the national response to

the Covid19 crisis has created additional challenges to the procurement

and completion of capital projects which is likely to cause delays to the

delivery of this project. There is also additional uncertainty as a result of

a lack of clarity about the plans for the phased re-opening of schools.