Top Marks for Bishop Fox’s Expansion
(Press release Somerset County Council): Taunton, 21 October 2020 - It’s top marks for Bishop Fox’s two new multi-million buildings after they were officially handed over by Somerset County Council and contractor BAM to the school this week.
The £7 million Somerset County Council project ensures young people aged 11-16 in the Taunton area continue to receive high quality education provision in two brand new state of the art buildings – a teaching block including 12 classrooms and four IT suites as well as a dedicated theatre and activity studio.
Despite the challenges of Coronavirus, contractor BAM worked relentlessly to ensure the teaching block was completed in time for students to return in September and meet all social distancing guidelines.
Cllr Faye Purbrick, Somerset County Council’s Cabinet Member for Education and Transformation said: ‘I’m delighted to hand over these two new state-of-the art facilities to the school community, benefitting children and young people now and for future generations. Taunton is growing, and we’ve invested heavily to ensure local schools can meet an increasing population. These new buildings ensure Bishop Fox’s school capacity can increase from 985 pupils to 1,200. We’d really like to thank everyone involved, and particularly the school and the contractor BAM for pulling out all the stops to ensure the teaching block was ready for students returning in September.’
Nic Blunsum, Acting Headteacher at Bishop Fox’s School, said: ‘We are delighted by the addition to our already excellent resources of these two new buildings. They provide us with 12 new classrooms and 4 new IT rooms alongside a first-class theatre and activity studio. These resources will be hugely beneficial to our students, particularly the theatre and activity studio, which will provide a great platform for our students to develop and demonstrate their expressive arts skills. The addition of these resources will continue to allow Bishop Fox’s to expand and grow as a school and we would like to thank BAM, Futures for Somerset and the Local Authority for their support and partnership in this project.’
Rob Shipp, Construction Manager at BAM, said:
‘We’re delighted to work again with Futures for Somerset, one of many projects we’ve worked on collaboratively over the last ten years. We were extremely pleased to work with Bishop Fox’s School to meet their needs and are very proud to have completed this project on time with zero defects. We would like to thank all our consultants and suppliers for their support – a big effort from everyone!’
A short video showing the new teaching and drama block:
Click here for the original press release.