Glenart College Granted Conditional Approval for Major Special Education Extension

Wicklow County Council have approved the KWETB plans for the major special education extension to Glenart College in Arklow together with additional teaching accommodation.

The application by Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board (KWETB) for special education facilities and teaching space proposes three classrooms of special education, an engineering room and various other alterations to provide additional teaching space within the school.

Wicklow County Council were granted planning permission for the school on Tuesday 27th October subject to a number of conditions. The planning application was submitted to the council on 4 September by Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board (KWETB).

The new single-storey special education extension will be constructed to the southeast of the existing building for the Special Education Teaching of three classes of students with special educational needs.

Plans for the special education and teaching rooms have also been included in the development of the new facilities, which will see the school’s current technology and metalwork rooms remodeled into three special education classrooms and extra teaching space.

From the planning documents, the Special Education extension is approximately 975m² plus 78m² for external storage.

The single storey annex would contain a new engineering room/office and the internal alterations would be approximately 172 sq.m.

Proposed external works to change the use of existing external storage will include demolition and provision of new external storage sheds and a new access road to the existing school yard. In addition, 31 new parking spaces for cars will be created along with an upgrade to the school’s drainage system and associated landscaping works.

The proposed investment aims to build on the existing school facility and educational provision offered to the students of Arklow and surrounding areas. This new building was completed in 2016 and is a thriving school for over 800 students.

The school offers a wide range of academic, technical and practical subjects along with specialist classrooms and workshops that already cater for a number of subjects.

A number of conditions are required to be met and an applicable appeal period will need to be satisfied. These must be fulfilled by the developer and the applicable appeal period must pass before the planning process is finally brought to a close.

Further details in relation to numbers of children with special educational needs for whom additional provision are sought through this development are also awaited.