Former school's £6m SEND sixth form development

A council has approved plans to buy back a former school in Grimsby and turn it into a special sixth form.

North East Lincolnshire Council sold Nunsthorpe School to Grimsby Institute in 2004 and it now operates as a technical and professional training centre.

The authority plans to repurchase the school and invest £6m to transform it into a separate sixth form site for Humberston Park Special School.

Councillor Margaret Cracknell said: "There's absolute demand for further premises in order to cope with the numbers of children that need this special education provision."

Cracknell added Humberston Park Special School's existing location in St Thomas Close, Humberston, had very little capacity to expand.

"We don't have any alternative but to this expansion so that children are ed in a building that suits them," she said.

Humberston Park Special School, which caters for pupils from age four to 19, is currently oversubscribed at approximately 140 students at its existing site.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a recent capacity assessment found its maximum intake should be 106 pupils.

A council document said the school can no longer offer a nursery and has indicated it will not be accepting new pupils until 2029.

By improving its capacity, fewer children with special needs will need to be sent out of the borough for their education, saving the council £31,000 a year.

The provisional funding for the refurbishment is made up of £4.5m from the council's general pupil place cash and £1.5m from the future Department for Education higher needs grant.

Grimsby Institute is vacating the former Nunsthorpe school due to new facilities it has been developing to host its animal husbandry courses at its main campus.

The move is expected to start from September.

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