Development of new city school takes next step

Ted Peskett Local Democracy Reporter

The development of a new multimillion-pound secondary school in Cardiff has taken another major step forward.

Cardiff Council announced on Wednesday, September 18, that it awarded a contract for the construction of the new Willows High School in Splott to Morgan Sindall Construction.

Plans for the new school, which will be built over the former Splott Market at the bottom of Lewis Road, were approved by the council’s planning committee in May.

It is anticipated the new school will be completed in the 2026-27 academic year.

Willows High headteacher Chris Norman said: “All of us at Willows welcome this news and we look forward to working with Cardiff Council and Morgan Sindall to develop and deliver a school that will provide exceptional learning facilities for our pupils and greatly benefit the communities that we serve.”

The current Willows High is located on Willows Avenue in Tremorfa.

Taking shape

A council report on the new school said the current building had reached the end of its life and faced a maintenance backlog of more than £3.8m.

There are currently 844 pupils on roll at the school and 123 members of staff.

The new building for Willows High, which was one of the city’s most undersubscribed secondary schools in 2023, will be able to accommodate 900 pupils once it is finished.

Cardiff Council’s cabinet member for education, Cllr Sarah Merry called the awarding of the contract for the school’s construction an exciting milestone and added: “I look forward to seeing first hand as the new school takes shape.”

Before the new school was given the go ahead, concerns were raised by a nearby business about associated plans to reduce the width of Freshmoor Road.

The owners of an industrial site adjacent to the application site, Brakespeed Investment Ltd, told Cardiff Council they thought the plans for a new school were “fantastic”, but added reducing the width of the road to make way for a new active travel route will impact access for its existing tenants and restrict future tenants to access the industrial units.

One of the directors of the company, Tom Young, wrote to the council to say his family’s business had “not been consulted directly to explain that this would happen and this will be detrimental to the businesses that operate from the site”.

He added it could potentially mean “that businesses can’t operate from the site as they used to”.

The planning application was subject to a 21-day consultation period starting from January 29.

Cardiff Council said in its report on the plans that it responded to the letter from Mr Young, “noting that the active travel route has already been permitted… and access is still retained to the site in question”.

Enabling works for the £60m scheme were also carried out by Morgan Sindall Construction.

Once it is built, the new school will also have a purpose-built special resource base for 30 pupils.