Morgan Sindall has been selected by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) to build two new schools in Wolverhampton.

The contractor will design and develop the schools in a £14 million campus on the site of the former Tarmac headquarters at Millfields Road.

The first project involves creating a new £3 million home for Wolverhampton Vocational Training Centre at Upper Villiers Street. The new, purpose-built 150,000 sq ft facility will be developed out of an existing garage on site, with the old roof and internal partitions stripped out and replaced by a portal steel frame and cladded panels.

The one-storey facility will feature 12 classrooms with capacity for 80 pupils, and designed with specific trades in mind, including construction, carpentry, catering, painting and decorating courses. Work on the facility is set to be completed at the end of this year.


The second project involves built a new £11m campus for the British Sikh School; a free secondary school governed by the Khalsa Academies Trust.

Plans include refurbishing an existing four-storey building on the site, to create a modern 53,000 sq ft learning environment with capacity to eventually accommodate 840 pupils.

A single-storey canteen will also be overhauled to provide a 8,800 sq ft modern dining area, in addition to specialist teaching spaces for cookery and music classes. The finished school will feature a separate 3,200 sq ft sports hall, built on a portal steel frame. External sports and recreation facilities will include an all-weather 3G pitch, along with tennis and basketball courts.

Work at the site is already underway, with Morgan Sindall carrying out extensive remediation work to old mine shafts, part of the former industrial site. The finished school is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Morgan Sindall framework manager, Dave Kelly, said: "Morgan Sindall framework manager, Dave Kelly, added: "Over the past six years Morgan Sindall has completed 30 projects with a value of around £170 million through our work on the CWM framework, and within that, 22 have been schools.

"Providing a learning environment aimed at getting young people with special education needs into work offers genuine social value to the local community. Building the British Sikh School on the same site will allow both organisations to share resources and allow the EFA to realise significant efficiencies.

"We're incredibly pleased to have been awarded these latest contracts and to continue our successful tenure on the framework."

(LM/MH)