Do new schools have to be built when new developments are?

[Smsquared]

Looking at new build developments in Surrey area, and near Cranleigh there must be 3 or 4, which will add thousands of new homes into the area. My DS is 2.5 and in nursery but what happens with school places when all of these new homes go up. Do councils then fund new schools in order to offer places to the students who will require them? If school places are allocated based on addresses, then I'm guessing this must be the case. I didn't grow up in the UK so still getting my head around how the catchment areas work etc. Thanks MNers!

In our area schools are oversubscribed due to new housing developments over the last few years.
The LEA buses kids as young as 5 to other schools out of the catchment area for the local primaries and Academy.

Yes and no.

New towns will have things like primary schools included in the plans.

New housing estates not always and often there is a lag between the houses going up and the facilities like schools. Usually because the LEA needs to run out of space to be able to get the funding for more spaces and then they have to build them.

It's meant to be done in the planning permission. The council should make developers responsible for all sorts of community facilities in developments- playgrounds, bus stops, and schools. As a rough guide there should be one single form primary school for every 800 houses, and one single form secondary school for every 2,400 houses.

Some councils are very good at making developers pay for this, others are not. Some political parties get significant donations from property developers, others do not.

In our local area new houses are going up at an astounding rate. One developer who we spoke to said that a primary school forms part of the plans that they submit to the council.

The developer gives the council the option of a) building the school for the council or b) giving the council the money they would have spent building the school.

As you can probably guess, council took the money and years late the primary school is yet to be built. I have friends who moved to the estate on the promise of a primary school being built (before they had children) and are now left with children about to start primary school and trying to get in all of the other massively oversubscribed schools in the area.

It's a total farce and probably corrupt.

Nope. I've been saying this for about 5 years since lots of new estates starting popping up in my town. Yet no new doctors, no facilities, no new schools, no dentists etc.
I've also read about a case on a big new estate with a brand new primary school built on site. But the number of children on the estate is more than the developers expected and is now oversubscribed. Some of the children on the estate didn't get into the primary school on their road and have to travel miles away.
It's just a lack of planning and foresight by this government again.

As far as I know, a school/GP etc has to be build for every x number of homes built. The developers around here get away with not doing it by saying two different estates are being built (each just slightly under the cut off) and so they don’t need one!

For development above a certain size, planners can ask for a payment towards the anticipated extra number of children that development would generate to pay towards education capacity.

Check on the Surrey County COuncil website for the education strategy - www.surreycc.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/schools/strategies-plans-policies-consultations/provision-of-school-places-and-school-expansions - this lays out how they will meet the demand for school places for the next decade or so.

Dont bank on any new schools proposed actually being completed on time though!

There’s something called the Community Infrastructure Levy and there’s another payment developers must make - which I’ve forgotten the name of - to councils to support local improvements

Section 106 contributions I think it is

In south Norfolk they don’t. They just keep adding them to the existing schools. When we moved here 10 years ago my dds class at the time had 10 children in it - which I appreciate is small compared to elsewhere- now there are 35 and they’re adding temporary cabin blocks to expand the classes. Crazy. Everyone is fed up with it all here, the doctors are also hugely oversubscribed.

Section 106, @ChuckBerrysBoots?

x-posted

We've had a lot of new homes round here recently. Instead of new schools they have expanded existing ones. So a 2 form entry went up to 3, and our 1 form entry went up to 2. Both the secondary schools added a class and all now also take fewer pupils from out of catchment than they did before.

Agree CIL monies are allocated towards either improving existing facilities or creating new ones - can be education provision, gp/healthcare facilities, play areas, roads, cycle routes, flood prevention, policing, shops, community centres etc. Sometimes they are built within new developments , but if so often towards latter phases.

I live in Surrey, where a local primary school closed 10 years ago, it’s never been replaced. A secondary school which was closed over 20 years ago has reopened 2/3 years ago, but I’m sure with the amount of houses being built, we will need more schools and GP surgeries.

Not any more. Academies are not planned or controlled by the council. The local councils used to have responsibility for having school places available. Not any more they don't. Apparently the free market of academies will work out just fine.

Except of course it won't.
Which is why ideology should not drive some things like education.

Interested in this although it won't affect my own DC. I live on the fringe of a large city, in an area that butts up against what is now green belt farmland. There are plans for 1500 homes to be built on the greenbelt land. Because it's the edge of the city there's only one primary school within anything like reasonable walking distance of the planned development, and it's already oversubscribed. But we've heard nothing about any expansion of school places?

I'm also boggling at the lack of accessibility. Due to a combination of a reservoir, train line, and motorway, the area marked for development is only accessible by a single B road that's 20mph in parts. There is an hourly bus but otherwise it's 30mins walk to the train station. It's going to be gridlocked twice daily. Again, I don't have to use that road so I'm fine, but it seems nuts.

I live near a new estate that’s due to have 2000 houses. A primary school is being built, but no secondary school. Apparently there are enough secondary school places in our town to cope with the new estate. That may be true, but the secondary school nearest the new estate has been oversubscribed for years so one way or another children will end up having to go right across town to one of the other secondaries.

The plans for the new estate show areas of ‘community facilities’ but it’s not clear what these will be. Again local GP surgeries are at capacity so I don’t know what will happen if a new GP surgery isn’t built.

The developers get round it by providing money for local schools to the council. I've deliberately phrased it like that as it's not a given that your school will get the money; if they've run out of space for new classrooms, more money isn't going to make kids fit where there's no space.

We've just had another development go through. Only after public submissions closed did they mention that children as young as infants would need to be bussed out to other schools with capacity as the local schools can't accept the children from this new estate. At least the developers got the money hey?

My SIL lives in a town where over 1000 new homes have been built in the last 3 years. Not only did they close a doctors surgery, they haven't built any more schools. My DN had to be bussed to school on his own at the age of 4.

We moved into a new build in 2011, with a secondary school across the road. At first, there was no spare capacity, but the school took over the adjacent leisure centre, which moved onto the developing site and the new leisure centre was funded by the developer.

We moved again in 2014 and the developer funded a primary school on site. There was provision for a GP surgery, but there weren’t any GPS who wanted to set up a new surgery. We had no trouble finding a GP. The developer part funded a relief road and there is a garage with Spar a five minute walk away, a Tesco Metro, five minutes the other way, an independent store and Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, Aldi, M&S Food, all within a few minutes drive. The bus service is fine too.

In our area of the SE there has been loads of building. Yes, a few new schools at primary. But secondary is crazy. One new secondary school and it’s already Over subscribed. The existing schools put up portacabins and one has been forced to add an extra class to y7 but the total capacity of the school can’t cope with that bulge as it starts to grow the school so… more portacabins, less space for the kids to roam in for lunch and breaks.

as for getting an nhs dentist or a gp/nurse appointment… good luck with that.

my community contribution may be to put my youngest in private school.