AN OUTDOOR amphitheatre, a multi-use games area and garden for lessons in horticulture are among the modern new facilities to be provided at a new Bangor school.
Cyngor Gwynedd planners unanimously approved a full planning application to develop the former Victorian Ysgol Glanadda school site, on Caernarfon Road.
The facility will cater for 200 pupils and will see children from the Roman Catholic Ysgol Ein Harglwyddes, Our Lady’s School, being relocated there.
The former Victorian school site will see the construction of a new single-storey 150 pupil primary, providing 20 nursery and 30 Cylch Meithrin places.
The original Glanadda building closed in 2020. Permission for its demolition has already been granted.
Built in the late 1800s, the school closed during a £12.7m investment into primary education.
Our Lady’s had long campaigned to move from its existing site on a busy section of Caernarfon Road.
The plans stated it currently operated within a “limited building and site” making “daily learning and teaching difficult.”
The existing building was “coming to the end of its service life” and had seen “continuous maintenance problems.”
The application also sought associated external works, boundary treatments, new car parking and improved access.
Five classrooms would be constructed, including one room each for the nursery and Cylch Meithrin.
A large hall would be at the development’s centre, with other sub-service rooms.
External work, included hard and soft landscaping, a multi-use games area (MUGA), external service area and sports field.
A 22 space carpark for staff and visitors, including two disabled parking spaces, two electric charging points with improved path and other access, will be developed.
The new building will be rectangular, more than double the surface area, an increase of 734m² to the old school.
But “the building will not appear substantially larger than the previous building.” The plans stated,
Planning officer Idwal Williams said the design of the building, its size, scale and appearance was “suitable to its city location.”
Increasing the size of the school, and encouraging use of outdoor spaces, was considered possible to create noise.
But as the school was only open for a limited number of hours, it was not considered to cause “any significant harm” to the amenities of local area or residents.
Planning officers recommended the proposal be accepted at a meeting, with conditions, today (Monday, February 27).
The proposals were accepted with a number councillors expressing their support for the scheme.
The committee unanimously agreed, with a vote of 11 in favour, no objections
