A long-awaited £13.2m revamp of Claremont School in Henleaze has finally got the green light from Bristol City Council.
The work will upgrade the Victorian manor house and enable the special school to have its primary and secondary pupils on the same site.
It is being paid for by a grant from the Department for Education, and could be completed within two years, councillors on the children and young people policy committee were told at a meeting in August.
James Anderson, the council’s head of major projects, said the work, which was first approved five years ago but has been awaiting funding, was urgently needed.
“It looks a bit like a school that’s been put into the Addams Family Mansion. It’s really old, it takes a huge amount of maintenance, and it’s approaching the end of its life. Unless the work is done, we’ll be at risk of closing parts of it, or maybe even the whole of it in course, ” he said.
The manor house was built in the 1850s and was bought by the council in the 1940s. Planning permission for the improvements was granted in 2022. Extensions will be demolished and replaced with a two-storey extension, while the interior will be refurbished.
The redevelopment will enable the council to increase the number of places for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) as well as freeing up space at Redland Green School, where Claremont secondary department is currently based.
The council is keen to create more SEND places to meet demand and reduce the enormous costs of sending children to private special schools.
Since 2020, 305 new SEND places have been created, with a further 500 planned over the next five years. These extra places mean that the council can spend less money paying independent schools.
By Alex Seabrook, Local Democracy Reporting Service