Long-held plans to build new school in Derbyshire village have almost doubled in price

Derbyshire County Council has been pursuing plans to build a new primary school in Tibshelf since 2016 and since then the cost has surged from £7 million to £12.5 million, new papers have revealed.

The council opened the £14.9 million Tibshelf School in Doe Hill Lane in 2013, serving as a replacement for the ageing and now derelict former Tibshelf Community School off High Street. Its plan was to build a new primary school on the disused playing fields at the former High Street site.

This primary school would be to replace the disrepaired Tibshelf Infant and Nursery School and Tibshelf Town End Junior School, which have combined repair backlogs totalling £1.2 million. Both schools sit close to the former community school off High Street.

Repairs on both schools “has been kept to a minimum”, the council says, due to the proposed demolition and replacement plans.

Council papers detail that the sale of the rest of the former High Street school site and the current sites of the two smaller schools are essential to provide the funding it needs to build the new primary. It plans to sell the site for housing in order to pay for the new school.

The council report says the initial budget planned for the authority to make £3.9 million from its sale of the sites of the former schools but it says the project now has a deficit of £6.76 million. Council officers are recommending the authority proceeds with the new school project