Millthorpe School in South Bank, York, £1.9 million upgrade

Property group Eddisons has project managed the £1.9 million refurbishment of a new dining area, toilet blocks and classrooms at Millthorpe School in South Bank in York.

READ MORE: Here's why this North Yorkshire school is celebrating

The 1,000-student York secondary school is run by South Bank Academy Trust with head teacher Gemma Greenhalgh.

Millthorpe after the work (Image: Eddisons)

Completed this month, the project has upgraded and modernised outdated areas of the school as well as freeing up the circulation of students and staff through the building by reconfiguring areas where bottlenecks were creating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.

READ MORE: York City legend to get lasting memorial in York

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.

How the new outside dining room area looked before the transformation (Image: Eddisons)

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.

“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.”

How the school looked before the transformation (Image: Eddisons)

Millthorpe 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 £1.9 million 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 project and project managing the construction of the new areas.

One of the new classrooms at Millthorpe (Image: Eddisons)