We’ve seen a little chatter on social media about this newly published planning application, some of which is a little confused. So to try and make things a little clearer, here’s a brief overview of the proposal.
McCormack House will be familiar to visitors to The Spring and users of the Billy Trail between Langstone and East Street. Originally built for Hampshire Social Services, it has most recently been the headquarters of Livelink, a local tech company which, pre-pandemic, had around 70 staff working from the site. With changing work patterns and a shrinking office based workforce, the site was put up for sale a year ago by a familiar name in local commercial property property agents, Holloway Iliffe & Mitchell. You’ll have seen their marketing signs around town in the vacant shops and offices.
The planning application is for a change of use “from office use (Class E) to education use (Class F1) and associated external alterations to the building and its curtilage, including provision of a multi-use games area (MUGA) and new fencing.” Specialist education company, Acorn Education have expressed interest in taking on the vacant property for use as a school for up to 70 children with special educational needs, from the local area.
To learn more, the best place to start is with the Planning and Heritage Statement, from which the following summary has been taken:
- “Acorn Care and Education provides education to young people with behavioural, emotional, social or learning needs, or a combination of them. The proposed school at Havant will be a school for Special Educational Needs (SEN).
- The age range of the pupils would be 11 – 18 years. The pupils would be located at the school throughout the school week (i.e. Monday to Friday between 9am and 3pm, 36/37 weeks per year, term time only). Principally the pupils will arrive on site either via private vehicles or mini-bus. 3.7
- The intention is that the school will help meet both the existing and future needs for specialist education in the area. This would reduce the number of children needing to travel ‘out of area’ to find an appropriate education environment and reduce overcrowding in existing settings. The proposal will therefore improve the learning outcomes of children in Hampshire (and potentially Sussex) who require specialist education.”
Take this link to view the documents associated with the Change of Use planning application.
Given the current and proposed internal layouts of the building, which you can see in the planning documents, it looks to be a good way to re-purpose an existing structure without the need for extensive demolition or reconstruction. Just as importantly, there are many families within the borough for whom the school would provide much-needed help and relief.
If you want to make a comment on the application, just look for this button on the application pages on the planning portal website:
Havant Civic Society 