The Retail Option
Changes in education policy and reduced funding require a
solution to saving billions of pounds whilst still ensuring ongoing
and necessary investment and development in the schools estate.
Our research findings, based on existing guidance for school
provision, have indicated that making use of an existing retail
shell could cut 36% from the average cost of building a new
school. Not having to begin construction from scratch would
speed up the programme, in some cases significantly, cutting
development timescales in half. It would also facilitate more
immediately flexible responses to short term local change in
demand.
As well as the adoption of former retail space; we have also
applied these ‘recycling’ principles to identify new ways to
deliver completely new buildings as well – applying techniques not
used previously in the education sector.
Click
here to download the 'Delivering better learning spaces more
efficiently' booklet
