Stockport is set to approve a 106,000 sq ft replacement for Bramhall High School, whose existing buildings contain extensive RAAC. As Place North West reported, the application, reference DC/098847, was submitted in May and is recommended for approval.
What RAAC is and why schools are still dealing with it
Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete was used widely in public buildings from the 1950s to the 1990s. It is light, cheap and quick to install, and it has a working life of around 30 years. Most of it is now well past that. When it fails it can do so with little warning, which is why the 2023 survey programme closed buildings at short notice across the country.
Three years on, the remediation programme is still working through the backlog, and Bramhall is one of the schools reaching the point of a full replacement rather than propping.
What is being built
Three storeys, capacity for 1,350 pupils. 25 classrooms including a drama studio, 10 science labs, computing, art and design spaces, and five SEN classrooms. An assembly hall with tiered seating, an indoor four-court sports hall with activity room, two multi-use games areas, an all-weather pitch and covered bike storage for 200.
Sheppard Robson is architect, Willmott Dixon the contractor, funded through the government’s School Rebuilding Programme, with PlanRed advising on planning.
The number that deserves scrutiny
The new building is 51,000 sq ft smaller than the sprawling complex it replaces, for the same number of pupils. The council notes this reflects the funding parameters available from government.
That is a polite way of saying the budget determined the size. Some of the reduction is genuine efficiency: a compact three-storey building wastes far less space on corridors and external walls than a sprawl of 1960s blocks, and it costs a fraction as much to heat. That is a real gain, and the running cost saving lasts for decades.
But a third less floor area is a large reduction, and it will show somewhere. Usually it shows in circulation space, storage, and the informal areas where pupils eat and gather. The five SEN classrooms are the thing to watch hardest, because specialist provision is the first thing squeezed when a floorplan has to shrink.
The straightforward good news
Set the caveats aside for a moment. A school full of failing concrete is being replaced with a new building, with proper science labs, an all-weather pitch and bike storage for 200. Willmott Dixon and Sheppard Robson are serious names. Stockport’s committee is expected to approve it, and Bramhall’s pupils get a building that is not held up by props.
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