New building approved for school left without home
LDRSA primary school will get a new building after pupils and teachers had to leave its previous one three years ago.
Sacred Heart RC Primary in Barrow was left without a school building in January 2023 after a routine safety inspection found it was structurally unsound.
Since then, pupils and teachers have had to split their time between temporary buildings on the school grounds and other schools, with children having shorter school days.
But plans to construct a new school building were approved by Westmorland and Furness Council on Tuesday.
Preliminary plans to demolish the condemned building and adjacent smaller buildings had already been approved, but plans for their replacement had to go before the local area planning committee, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Head teacher Simone Beach told the committee: "The children's education has really suffered.
"They have had to put up with a shorter school day, buses, and we've not always had the things we've needed to deliver the national curriculum because they were left in a condemned building."
Planners had raised concerns about the design of the new building being "bland and generic", but those concerns were mitigated with updated plans which reflected the original building and nearby church.
A planning officer said she was happy all of the outstanding issues, which also included drainage, had been resolved.
The committee voted unanimously to approve the proposals.
