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Portakabin hands over first phase of £44m school campus project in Barking

Construction firm The Portakabin Group have officially handed over the first phase of a new multi-million pound development which, once completed, will be the UK’s largest free school campus.

The new Riverside Bridge special educational needs (SEN) school is part of the three-school Riverside Campus in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham which, once completed, will encompass 23,000 sq m with integrated provision for nursery, primary, special needs, secondary and sixth form pupils.

Operated by the multi-academy trust, Partnership Learning, the second and third phase of the project, which has been designed by Surface to Air Architects, is due to be handed over in late Spring 2017 in time for the 2017/18 academic year.

Anna Hope, who is Head of School at Riverside Bridge said that the new building ‘already feels familiar’ to Riverside’s pupils, with particular care taken during the design phase to ensure a smooth transition as some special needs children are particularly attuned to change.

She said: “The wide corridors, larger classrooms and overall design have created a really calm environment for the children. They love the floor-to-ceiling windows which overlook the outside play area and allow lots of light into the building for a very welcoming feel.”

The campus project is being constructed using a Yorkon off-site, modular solution, where the structure itself has been manufactured in York while ground work was underway at the site, to ensure a faster completion and minimise disruption.

The Riverside development itself is the seventh school contract awarded by Barking and Dagenham Council to Portakabin after procuring the work from the Council’s Local Education Partnership, Thames Partnership for Learning.

Jane Hargreaves, Strategic Director of Education at London Borough of Barking and Dagenham said: “Portakabin has been easy to work with, and the scheme has been on target to the advantage of our special needs students.”

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