Purpose

The County Council has a statutory duty to
provide sufficient school places for all children who need a
place.
 
Increasing provision for children and young
people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
through the creation of additional places in Special Schools will
assist with the aim of enabling children to attend school locally.
As a consequence this will reduce the number of children and young
people with SEND moving from maintained schools and academies into
costly education provision in the Independent and Non-Maintained
Special School sector, often at schools not situated in West
Sussex. 
 
Oak Grove College is a secondary special
school offering generic 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 has been
undertaken on the establishment of a satellite provision to Oak
Grove on another site owned by the County Council in Worthing. The
study has illustrated how the building and site at The Pines,
Worthing, if established as a satellite site, could expand the
planned places for Oak Grove by up to 60 taking the current planned
places from 278 to 338.
 
Following completion of the feasibility study,
capital funding is now required to enable the design work for the
project to be progressed to RIBA Stage 4 enabling detailed cost
estimates to be produced for scheme delivery.

Decision

The Cabinet Member for Children and Young
People, Learning and Skills has approved:
 

(1)The allocation of
£1.05m from the SEND capital budget to fund the necessary
design work as set out in paragraph 2.5 of the report to support
the delivery of the expansion of Oak Grove College onto a site at
the County Council building, The Pines, Faraday Close in
Worthing.