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King Edward VI Community College

King Edward VI Community College

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Description of Areas of Land Identified as Surplus and Considered for Disposal (3)

AREA

SIZE (HECTARES)

CURRENT

USE

DISPOSAL

YES/NO

COMMENTS

A. The Sheep Field

0.824

The area is overgrown and not used by the College at all

Yes

 

B. Redworth House Gardens

0.86

Recreational area for Sixth Form only

Yes*

This area is being considered for disposal subject to discussions with Devon County Council.

Consideration needs to be given to ecological challenges as there are substantial trees surrounding the site.

C. Redworth House

1.5

Sixth Form centre

Yes*

 

This area is being considered for disposal subject to discussions with Devon County Council.

Redworth House is a Victorian residential property used to accommodate the Sixth Form.  Despite its character and charm the building is not an effective learning environment and requires significant investment (at least £500,000 over the next 3 years) to maintain the building safely without improving the quality of the current learning spaces.  Recognising its limitations as a learning environment the most viable option was to include this asset as a disposal, and reinvest a significant part of the receipt into re-providing a new dedicated block for post 16 pupils.

D. Junior Sports Pitch

1.43

Used as sports pitch by College

No

Due to access issues to the area and the fact that this is a designated sports pitch the proposal is that this area remains as a sports pitch used by the College.

E. Lower School Building, (Elmhirst Site)

0.91

The building is not currently used by the College

 

Yes

This building is in a state of significant disrepair and would need considerable investment (at least £1.25 million) to bring it back into safe use, without improving the quality of the current learning spaces.

 

F1. Part Lower School Field

1.3

Currently, a green space used by the College weather permitting

Yes

Issues regarding removal of Open Space, Public Access, and Sport England challenges, will trigger the need to potentially re-provide a sports pitch on the main Redworth Campus to compensate for the loss of a sports pitch here.

F2 & G

Part Lower School Field & All Weather Pitch

2.8

This is the area of the lower school site currently used for the All-Weather Pitch site (mainly G in Plan 1), a rugby/football pitch, and some extra green-field, open space.

No

Part of this land (all of F2 and a small section on G) is owned by the Dart Valley Learning Trust (in Trust for the College) with the remaining part leased by the College on a long-term lease from the Dartington Estate.

This area is not being considered for development and the proposal is to retain this area under College ownership but to seek proposals from local groups to establish community use arrangements with a view to managing this area as a new community asset, available to be used both in the College day and at evenings and weekends.  Developments elsewhere may trigger a need to relocate some car parking and changing facilities to this location to facilitate its use as a community asset.

 

Only the areas identified as E and F1 in Plan 3 are being considered for disposal. Areas F2 and G would be retained by KEVICC.

The College is at the heart of the community and is aware of local needs and concerns.  In particular, we are conscious of the sensitivity and strong feelings that exist around the disposal of the area marked F1, F2, and G on Plan 3.  Although this whole area along with the rest of the KEVICC site is already identified in the South Hams Local Plan as allocated for housing development, we are conscious of a desire within the community to have increased open space available for recreation.  Therefore, the College is considering only disposing of a portion of this area nearest to the main road for development (shown as F1 in Plan 3) with the rest (F2 and G) being retained as a playing field.  The retained area would still be surplus to the College’s requirements and its location would make it problematic for the College to access and manage. 

The majority of Area G is currently leased from the Dartington Trust and is the location of most of the existing All Weather Pitch (AWP).  This facility is already managed under a community use agreement, and we see this proposal as an opportunity to increase the availability of this asset to the community, for instance the College day. 

Therefore, the College would like to explore the option for these areas to be taken on and managed by a local community group(s).  This is something that the College would welcome expressions of interest and further discussions about; there is an opportunity in the consultation response form for groups or individuals to indicate if this is something that they would be interested in discussing further.

The disposals are expected to raise significant capital funding for reinvestment in the remaining school estate. The aim is to use this capital funding to create modern and efficient learning environments for current and future pupils.  The investment will allow the College to address existing shortfalls and improve poor condition accommodation as well as develop new, modern facilities for pupils and the local community.

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