St Lawrence SEND School

Our Midlands team have built a new special education needs and disabilities (SEND) school for Lincolnshire County Council. This is the fifth SEND school project we have worked on for the council, with all of the schools forming part of the council’s £100m investment to improve SEND support for local children and young people.

Extra precautions were taken to ensure minimal disruption for students and staff as the new school was built on a live site. This enabled the old building to remain operational during the works.

Watch a timelapse video of the school being built

Facilities

The new school includes a huge range of facilities designed for accessibility and inclusivity.

Spaces include:

• A health hub offering physiotherapy
• Soft play and sensory areas
• A full education suite including science labs, design and technology, and art classrooms
• Essential life and social skills areas
• Hall spaces with changing and hygiene suites
• State-of-the-art profound and multiple learning disability (PMLD) suites
• Covered external play spaces
• 65 parking spaces, with accessible, enlarged and minibus spaces
• Capacity for 28 minibuses for a managed pick-up/drop-off system

Embedding sustainability

The new school took a fabric-first approach to deliver an improved U-value that surpasses the standard found in most schools. This approach will help to ensure the building is more energy efficient.

The building also incorporates other sustainable solutions such as air source heat pumps and electric vehicle charging points.

Future-proofing the school

As well as embedding some sustainable measures into the current build, we are also helping to future-proof the building.

With future Governmental targets requiring buildings to be net-zero by 2050, we have also incorporated the infrastructure for future upgrades to the building. Including these in the build will help to reduce the cost of future upgrades as well as making them quicker and easier, reducing the disruption to students and staff in the future.

The team scored 45 on their first Considerate Constructors Scheme visit

Giving back to the community

As this was a live site, engaging the students at the school was a key focus for our team. We set up a number of site tours for the students, as well as a specific viewing area where students could stand at a safe distance and observe the progress being made on their new school.

We also delivered site tours, work experience and careers guidance to other educational institutions in the area such as Boston College and a local grammar school.

Nick Heath, director of delivery in the Midlands at Willmott Dixon, said:

“We’re pleased to be strengthening our relationship with Lincolnshire County Council on creating this future-proofed SEND school.

“We take a consultative approach to projects, especially sustainable solutions. Initially, the council wanted to refurbish the existing school, but the work required to refurbish and extend it wouldn’t have been value-for-money in the long-term. We therefore recommended the creation of this new facility.

“The school’s sustainable measures will help to future-proof it against upcoming government targets, while also allowing the council to incorporate sustainable solutions in the future with minimised costs and disruption.”

Cllr Mrs Patricia Bradwell OBE, executive member for children’s services at Lincolnshire, said:

“Over the last few years, the council has invested around £100m in improving and expanding special schools across the county. Horncastle St Lawrence is the latest in a long list of success stories we’ve had to celebrate as a result of the project, and I’m sure the much-improved facilities will make a life-changing difference to pupils.”

Tonya Stokes, headteacher of St Lawrence School, said:

“The new school has made a dramatic difference in terms of purposeful spaces for teaching and learning. Specialist spaces allow for groups of learners to really focus on specific areas of learning e.g. arts, food tech, library and having these spaces is having a positive impact on the delivery of the curriculum.

"The space within school means that our most complex learners can access different areas of school freely. The addition of specific sensory spaces is meeting the needs of a wide range of students and enables them to have increased sensory input to support their readiness for learning.

“Access to group rooms means that teaching can be focused in small groups, which supports high-quality delivery. The width of the corridors and space has really supported positive transitions and the whole school feels much calmer! Students are eagerly awaiting the further development of the outdoor spaces once the grass is fully grown, and this will also enhance our outdoor learning offer.”

Lea Mason, CEO of INSPIRE Connected Communities Trust, added:

“As a community we are extremely pleased with the new building at St Lawrence. As a trust we are enormously grateful to Lincolnshire County Council, who have worked in partnership with us, providing significant investment as part of their ‘Building Communities of Specialist Provision’ strategy, which has enabled this provision.

“Through our trust shared values of community, connection and communication, our aim is continually and consistently, to assist our pupils and students in reaching their full potential. This new build supports our skilled staff in delivery of our personalised and purposeful curriculum, in providing access to appropriate, purpose-built spaces, both inside and out.

“The impact of this work is far reaching and will continue to be for many years to come. Our pupils and students both current and into the future, now have access to a purpose-built and considered environment, that will continue to provide many learning opportunities around complex needs, including access to world of work experiences, not only for our students, but also the local community.”