News / Education
Bid to protect former special needs school
A former school which has been at the centre of a long-running planning battle could be protected from redevelopment.
A group of former families and staff, charities, local organisations and businesses has backed plans for St Christopher’s School to be designated as an Asset of Community Value (ACV).
It comes four months after Bristol City Council voted down plans to convert the site into a luxury retirement village.
is needed now More than ever
Founded by Catherine Grace in 1945, the residential special education school overlooking the Downs in Westbury Park closed in 2020 after it was deemed economically unviable.
SEND Alliance call the closure “a moment of great sadness” because the site was the last residential school for children with complex needs in the city. It wants to reinstate special needs educational provision on the five-acre site by getting it ACV status.
https://twitter.com/SCANBristol/status/1689285574375452672
The application is endorsed by local councillors, Westbury Park Primary School, Westbury Park Community Association, Bristol North MP Darren Jones and Aardman co-founder Peter Lord.
Lord said: “As a near neighbour of St Christopher’s School, I am very aware of how valuable it was for children and parents alike within the Bristol Community.
Jones said he hoped the site could be used to “further the social wellbeing of the local community in the future”, as it had done when it was a school.
It was revealed in November at a council meeting that almost 200 children with special educational needs and disabilities in Bristol are not having their needs met.
The plans, which were refused, would have seen the historic school buildings converted into ‘extra care’ apartments, and several new buildings constructed too – image: FORE
Once listed, if an ACV comes up for sale, the community have the chance to buy it first and take over its running.
Bristol City Council recently awarded the status to Redfield Cinema, an art deco cinema hidden in a former Wetherspoons on Church Road in Redfield.
A decision on the application for St Christopher’s will be made by the council in the next eight weeks.
Main photo: SCAN
Read next:
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- Chicken Run stars join Amelia Dimoldenberg for Chicken Shop Date
- Bristol headteachers say SEND parents ‘feel like schools don’t want their children’
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