Early date for school in Park

Jan 15 2008 by Paul James, The Journal

PLANS for a new first school on one of the North’s most upmarket housing estates will be pushed through ahead of schedule to help attract new residents and businesses, developers said yesterday.

The school, on the Newcastle Great Park at Gosforth, was not due to be built until 1,200 homes had been filled on the site.

Yesterday Peter Jordan, regional projects director of Persimmon Homes, told a meeting at the city council that plans would go to planning councillors in March, with an aim of building the new school for the start of term in September 2009.

The announcement comes as just more than 600 homes on the Great Park have been occupied and was among a series of plans Mr Jordan outlined yesterday to council staff, which also included a hotel, a fitness centre, a raft of affordable housing, a supermarket and Extra Care accommodation for the elderly. Mr Jordan said the school would help the Newcastle Great Park Consortium to attract businesses to the park and more people to the new homes west of the A1.

The planning application for the school would also feature the park’s new “East Village” residential area.

Referring to the decision to release the school land ahead of schedule, Mr Jordan told the Newcastle Great Park Advisory Committee: “It is a huge commercial decision that the consortium have made and one we think is pretty fundamental to all of this. A school is a very good start to sell houses and attract mixed uses to the town centre.”

Newcastle Council leader, John Shipley, said: “In terms of the school, there is a big commitment given by the authority for an opening date of September 2009. It has been done because of the number of young families moving into the Great Park. That is welcome, but it is very important that that is now achieved.”

The council’s head of planning and transport, Harvey Emms, said: “There are a lot of positive news and messages we can make out of these applications. The next message is sorting out the rest of the town centre. We don’t want to provide an extra care centre without a town centre. This is a complex, comprehensive scheme we’re looking at and we need to make sure it fits together.

“It is very important for both sides of the table that we keep that momentum going.”

Meanwhile three new office blocks continue to be built next to the headquarters of software company Sage, as part of the developers’ plan to create 10,000 quality jobs on the business park.