Work to spruce up Madras College in St Andrews will be carried out over the summer holidays as the wait for a replacement school goes on.
Fife’s education authority has insisted its commitment to providing a new school in the area remains “as strong as ever”, despite Stepal (St Andrews Environmental Protection Association Limited) winning its appeal to quash planning consent for the council’s favoured site at Pipeland earlier this year.
In the meantime though, Fife Council will spend some money on the present buildings in South Street and Kilrymont – which some parents have said are in a “deplorable” state in the past – over the summer break, with further improvements planned moving forward.
Making the distinction between the council as education authority and planning authority, Shelagh McLean, head of education and children services, gave members of the education, health and social care scrutiny committee an update.
“We, as the applicant, are now waiting for information to come from the planning authority that will identify what further information we are required to submit as the applicant,” she explained.
“We are waiting for that information to come to us, and we are anticipating that we will get that information around mid- to late June.
“What we have committed to as part of interim and future investment plans is that we will undertake work on the current buildings.
“The initial scope of that work will be undertaken over the summer holidays.
“Most of that is aesthetics, to make the environment nicer for the children and young people attending school, because we can’t really carry out any major engineering works because we haven’t had the lead-in time.
“But what we committed to is that once we’d planned out the work over the summer holidays, we would go back to the pupils and staff of Madras College and have a consultation with exercise to talk through the wider programme of work that could then be carried out over the next year.”
The initial work, which will include redecoration and the replacement of floor coverings, will be funded through the Building Fife’s Future programme in the first instance, until a review of the capital programme can be done at a Fife Council level.
Once the summer work is done, which should also take into account any outstanding health and safety issues at the school, a further report on what’s required is expected in September following consultation.
“We want to reassure elected members, but also pupils, parents and carers and also the wider public, that the decision not to appeal the court decision… we wouldn’t want that to be viewed as a lack of commitment to the provision of a new school in the St Andrews area,” Ms McLean added.
“Our commitment to that is as strong as ever as an education authority.”
Looking further ahead, Ms McLean went on to reiterate that, as well as Pipeland, alternative site options will also be considered as part of the process.
“We, as the education authority, need to identify what our key criteria are and we need to revisit what those were at the time when the decision was taken in 2011/12,” she said.
“There is a whole number of factors that we would want to take into account and we will specify those clearly in advance of doing another site appraisal.”
