Prospect School: £650,000 revamp of Havant special school approved

Prospect School is a special school for up to 80 boys aged between 11 and 16 with social, emotional, and mental health needs (SEMH). Some of these boys also have additional difficulties that impact their learning, such as autism spectrum disorder. Hampshire County Council’s executive lead member for children’s services, Cllr Steve Forster, has approved spending £650,000 to alter and refurbish the current accommodation and make it “more suitable” for these boys.

The school, in Freeley Road, was built in 2007 and is made up of a series of single-storey clay-tiled pitches. In 2019, sections of the roof space were converted to provide three additional classrooms, additional office space, and a meeting room, enabling the school to increase its capacity from 62 to 80 pupils.

The latest project will see various internal alterations and refurbishments to the ground-floor accommodation, together with improvements to skills rooms and sports and exercise facilities, such as transforming the unused changing rooms into a small fitness gym. It also involves converting a small meeting room into an interactive gaming hub, installing new external gym equipment, and upgrading the existing multi-use games area. Night-time cooling ventilation will be installed in the life skills room, gaming hub, and small gym to cope with extreme weather.

During his decision day, Cllr Forster said that the improvements will provide better facilities for the health, well-being and education of the children at the school. He said: “This is not building any extra spaces, but very importantly, it is making sure that we can use the space we have as effectively as possible and provide better facilities for those children at the school.

“I note with interest that we’ve put in a small fitness gym, which is really positive, as well as a gaming hub, so that’s bringing us kicking and screaming into the current timeline who provide something that I think will be really good for the health and well-being and education of these children.”

Work is expected to take place during the 2024 summer school holiday and to be finished by the start of the new school year.