Work completes on new £7.6m Castleward primary school

Morgan Sindall Construction has completed work on a new £7.6 million primary school, which has been built as part of the Castleward regeneration scheme.

After being appointed in June 2020, construction work on Castleward Spencer Academy started two months later.

It finished last month on schedule, with 315 pupils entering the classrooms from this September, as well as 39 nursery children.

Councillor Evonne Williams, the city council’s cabinet member for children, young people and skills, said: “We are delighted to be welcoming the first pupils to our newest primary school at Castleward.

“The school will be vital in transforming the regeneration of an inner-city area into a thriving community.”

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Richard Fielding, area director at Morgan Sindall Construction, said: “To have a superb high-quality facility such as this will help anchor further regeneration and give the area and its people a genuine boost.”

The school is a key element of the £100 million regeneration of Castleward, which involves the building hundreds of news homes by Compendium Living.

The new school building, which is a combination of one and two-storey blocks, has innovative rooftop play areas with two-metre-high parapets to keep children safe.

This approach to design allows for the school to achieve more outdoor recreational space than the site would have traditionally allowed; it also has a multi-purpose games facility for active play.

Inside the school, space has again been maximised with ground floor classrooms accessed from the main hall at its centre, which has a full height lightwell to bring in natural light to the heart of the building.

Folding and sliding doors in the main hall also offer flexible use of space which can be quickly changed for a variety of uses.

Rob Cant, SCAPE framework director at Morgan Sindall Construction, said: “Derby’s new Castleward Spencer Academy has been delivered through a truly collaborative approach with both Derby City Council and Lungfish Architects via SCAPE, and it had to be in order to deliver the project on time.

“This close collaboration was required not only because of the restrictions on space that the site presented us with, but also because of the impact of working through the pandemic and multiple lockdowns.

“Any delay to the project would have put the city council’s wider regeneration in jeopardy, which involves further significant schemes on adjacent sites.

“We are very proud that we have finished the project to our usual high standards and on schedule and that is a testament to the excellent co-operation and understanding between all parties from start to finish.”