Morgan Sindall starts school rebuild in Birkenhead

The construction company has started the £12m transformation of Ridgeway High School in the Noctorum area of the Wirral town.

The project is one of 12 schools being rebuilt by the company under the Education Funding Agency’s Priority School Building Programme, designed to provide purpose-built facilities for schools most in need of repair.

Originally built in the 1970s and extended in the 1990s, Ridgeway is an 825-pupil co-educational secondary school principally serving the Noctorum, Prenton and Oxton areas of Wirral.

The school is currently housed within the large original two-storey building and single-storey sports hall with the later extension home to the school’s language teaching facilities. Ridgeway has been designated as both a Business & Enterprise and a Language Specialist College.

The existing buildings will be replaced with a three-storey block and a new single-storey sports hall which will be used by the school and local community. Once the new buildings complete, in early 2018, the original buildings will be demolished and replaced with new access routes and landscaping. The architect is HLM Architects.

Richard Potts, contracts manager at Morgan Sindall, said: “Starting on site is a key milestone in any project and it is great to get underway at Ridgeway. We have delivered many new school buildings around the region and we are sure that the local community will be very proud of the new school which will emerge over the coming months.”

This project forms part of the North West batch, awarded to Morgan Sindall in August 2014, which includes a total of 12 schools in Blackpool, Chester, Wigan, Manchester, Stockport and Merseyside.