Council needs to find around £900,000 for sprinklers at new school amid safety concerns

Councillors have refused to back plans to cut a sprinkler system from a new school in order to save money.

Members of Cambridgeshire County Council argued they did not want it on their conscience if sprinklers were not installed and something happened to the school.

The council must now find around £900,000 to pay for the system at the new secondary school at the Alconbury Weald development, where around 6,500 new homes are being built.

The council is obligated to open the school before 1,350 homes are completed under a Section 106 agreement.

It said that as of April 2024, some 1,038 homes had been completed at the development.

The school project was paused after the engineering and construction contract sum “significantly” exceeded the budget for the scheme.

A report said a redesigned proposal was put together which was within the agreed budget of around £37million.

The council said it hopes work to build the school could start in May 2025, and to open to students in September 2027.

The redesigned proposal did not include a sprinkler system, which the council said would cost around £850,000 to £900,000 and add an extra two weeks to the construction programme.

The authority said a risk assessment and the Department for Education (DfE) guidelines had concluded it would be acceptable not to include sprinklers, and officers said the fire service had been consulted.

A report said: “The [fire safety] advisor has noted that the academy trust will be able to effectively manage the site and building security and their maintenance and fire safety procedures in accordance with the recommendations of an ‘average risk’ building as detailed within the DfE assessment tool.”

The report also highlighted fire protection features proposed for the school, including a roller shutter fire door built between the kitchen and the dining hall, which would automatically close if a fire alarm was set off.

However, some councillors said they should be ‘maximising’ the safety of students and insisted a sprinkler system was included.

Cllr Anne Hay (Con, Chatteris) said she was “not comfortable at all” about not installing a sprinkler system in a three-storey school building.

She said the measures highlighted in the report focused on preventing fire spreading from the kitchen, but asked what would happen if a fire started elsewhere.

Cllr Hay argued that if this happened and children were “trapped on the third floor” a sprinkler system would give more time for them to be rescued.

Cllr Simone Taylor (Ind, St Neots Eynesbury) highlighted that the Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service said on its website that sprinkler systems could save lives, provide a greater chance for people to get out if there is a fire, and reduce the risk to firefighters if they have to enter a building.

Cllr Taylor said she understood the sprinkler system would cost a “large amount of money”, but said she could not support the proposals to not install it.

Cllr Philippa Slatter (Lib Dem, Trumpington) said the proposal felt like a “false economy”.

Cllr Mark Goldsack (Con, Soham North and Isleham) said the council should be trying to “maximise the safety of the children” not to “minimise to save costs”.

Cllr Samantha Hoy (Con, Wisbech East) added: “Heaven forbid anything ever does happen, I do not want to be sat here in five or six years time being asked ‘why on earth did you not vote to put sprinklers in this school’ and feeling like I have got that on my conscience, I am just not down for that I am afraid.”

However, Cllr Bryony Goodliffe (Lab, Cherry Hinton), chair of the committee, said she had spoken to a headteacher of a primary school that opened in 2019 with a sprinkler system installed.

Cllr Goodliffe said the headteacher had told her that the school had faced extra costs to maintain the system, and had needed to repair damage caused by a leak.

She said the headteacher had also claimed the cost of installing the sprinkler system could have funded extra spaces for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Cllr Anna Bradnam (Lib Dem, Waterbeach) said she had been “uncomfortable” about the plans to not include a sprinkler system, but highlighted that they had been told it would follow the guidelines set out by the DfE and that the building would conform to required standards.

She said it would be “unwise” for them to “contradict” people with expertise in the area.

When a decision was put to a vote the majority of members agreed to support awarding the contract to build the secondary school within the project budget.

However, a majority of members refused to support the plans to not include a sprinkler system, meaning it would be required.

Cllr Goodliffe said the council would have to go away and look at what it was able to afford within the project budget, and what potential savings may need to be made in order to pay for the sprinklers.

If the savings can not be found within the project, she said they would have to ask if more funding could be made available.