Purpose

Oak Grove College is a secondary special school in Worthing offering generic Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision for children and young people aged between 11 and 19. There is a need to increase the number of places at the College and a feasibility study and initial design work has been undertaken to enable this increase by the establishment of a satellite provision to Oak Grove on another site owned by the County Council. The study has illustrated how the building and site at The Pines, Worthing, if established as a satellite site, could expand the pupil places for Oak Grove by up to 60 taking the current planned places from 278 to 338.

The Department for Education (DfE) guidance sets out the process that should be undertaken when considering expanding a special school which consists of a number of stages.  An informal consultation was launched in Spring 2025 to seek views on the proposal to create a satellite site for Oak Grove College. The consultation ran during April and May 2025 and views and comments were collated from interested parties

After considering the feedback from the consultation, which indicated that over 95% of those who responded supported the proposal, in September 2025 the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Learning approved progression to the next stage of the DfE process, the publication of formal statutory proposals to create an additional 60 places for Oak Grove College at a satellite site at The Pines. The Cabinet Member also delegated authority to the Service Director (Education and Skills) to determine whether the proposal should proceed following consideration of any representations received during the statutory consultation stage.

The Statutory Proposals were published for a four-week period during October and November 2025 and this provided the opportunity for all interested parties and the public to submit any comments about the proposal.

96.1% of those who responded supported the expansion and further details of the representations received during the statutory proposal period are set out in section 4 of this report. Following consideration of the representations received it is proposed to proceed with the creation of a satellite site at The Pines for Oak Grove College.

Decision

The Service Director (Education and Skills) has approved the expansion of Oak Grove College, through the creation of a satellite site at The Pines, increasing planned places by 60 additional specialist school places, taking the current planned places from 278 to 338.