Estate management
This page is still under development. We’re putting together a range of information to share with you about how we manage the school site and buildings.
We’ll also be sharing with you our maintenance plan for the next few years, and our plans for improving our facilities and increasing our floor area to match what would now be provided for a newly built school of our size. We’ll also share with you how we monitor health and safety issues and plan improved access and inclusion.
Not least we’ll also be sharing our plans to reduce our carbon footprint and go for net zero by our bicentenary.
Watch this space!
Quick links
Estate vision
We are moving to a new process in our management of the school estate. The first step in the process has been for the governing body to develop a strategic vision for the school site and the buildings and facilities on it.
The vision covers the period from 2024 to our bicentennary celebrations in 2033, nine years in whch we hope to transform our estate to meet the challenges of education in the twenty first century.
You can download and read the whole document, but the key points are the four objectives we have set ourselves:
- To reduce the environmental impact of our use and occupation of the estate
- To adapt our estate to the changing climate
- To develop the estate by making provision for facilities which we lack
- To become a more inclusive and equal community by making our estate fully accessible
The next step we will take is to carry out a strategic review, with external professional support to help us develop specific projects to meet our four objectives. As part of that process we will also consult parents, staff and the wider community.
Health and safety
The health and safety of everyone on our school estate is paramount for us as a school community.
As a voluntary controlled school, in which staff are employed by Hertfordshire County Council, the local authority has overall responsibility for health and safety in the school. Our health and safety policy follows the local authority’s model and you can read it by clicking on the button below. The policy has further hyperlinks to local authority and other guidance.
Access
One of our objectives under our new school vision for our estate is to become a more inclusive and equal community by making our estate fully accessible. Part of our school Accessibility Plan concerns our physical environment and you can read the current plan by following the link below.
Access is not just about ramps instead of steps, it’s about how everyone, staff, pupils, visitors and parents can take part in the life of our community on an equal basis. For some people that will be about being able safely to enter the school grounds and buildings and move around inside freely. But it’s also about making changes to include people who might have hearing loss or issues around impaired vision, for example; or about creating the right environment and ambience for learning for people with behavioural challenges (all about light, colour, noise, decoration and furnishing). Basically we want no one to be left out or disadvantaged. Some good work has been done on this in the past, but it’s time to review and move forward.
Some changes might be quick and easy to fix, and not cost very much money; but other things might take time to plan and need to be included in our medium to long term programme due to cost.
The first step along this road is to ask our current community what we should do to improve access. It’s part of our strategic review. We’ll be carrying out a formal process in the autumn term of 2024, consulting parents, staff and pupils. We aim to identify what we need to do, and develop a plan with clear priorities.
We’ll be asking you to take part, but there’s no need to wait for the formal process to start: if there’s something you’d like us to change or you know we should be doing, tell us now!
This page was last updated on 9th July 2024