A massive project to build a new secondary school, hundreds of new homes and businesses as part of the Temple Quarter regeneration project has finally been given Government approval. Housing minister Stuart Andrew has endorsed a planning inspector's decision to allow the plans for the Silverthorne Lane area of the city - which is located behind Temple Meads station, close to the Feeder canal.
It means a long-running campaign to get a secondary school built in this area - which parents and local politicians have called for for years - has been successful and work should be able to start soon. The delays to the new secondary school meant scores of young people were leaving primary school in the BS2 and BS5 areas of the city with other schools having to set up temporary classrooms to cope with the demand.
The planning permission is for a phased development to include offices, research and development units for the Temple Quarter university project, up to 367 new homes and a 1,600-pupil secondary school, along with listed building consent to refurbish some of the listed Victorian industrial buildings that line the Feeder.
Read more: Fears over secondary school places crisis in Bristol
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Local MP Kerry McCarthy welcomed the news, after joining parents in her constituency who have long called for the school to happen. In October last year, Bristol Live reported that the shortage of secondary school places in parts of Bristol was becoming a crisis.
Figures released by the authority in the summer of 2021 showed there were 291 more pupils in the city due to start secondary school in September 2021 than places available, and that this was expected to soar to 515 within three years. Schools are taking more than their official maximum number of children while some students are being sent to South Gloucestershire for lessons, the first time this has had to happen, as the council meets its legal requirement to provide a place for every Bristol youngster.
Bristol Live reported that the situation is further compounded by delays to two large new Department for Education (DfE) secondary schools in Bristol for a total of 2,500 children - one of which was the Silverthorne Lane site. Bristol City Council approved a private developer’s plans to build hundreds of new homes, offices, shops, student accommodation and a large new secondary school on industrial land beside the Feeder Canal in August 2020.
But the Environment Agency objected over flooding concerns, prompting the secretary for housing, communities and local government to ‘call in’ the application. A public inquiry was held in May 2021 and today's decision has been long awaited.
There were fears that if the Government minister overturned the council planning consent and rejected the plans, it would be a bitter blow to parents in East Bristol where there is a desperate need for new secondary school places.
Now the plans have the green light, the 1,600-place Oasis Academy Temple Quarter will occupy the largest of six parts of the development proposed by Feeder Estates, a partnership managed by Square Bay.
Student accommodation, including a 17-storey tower block with 693 beds for University of Bristol students, would sit between the school and the end of the development nearest to St Philip’s Causeway.
Hundreds of new homes and offices for commercial and university use would sit on the other side of the school, nearer the Avon Street junction end of the development near Motion nightclub.
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