Catching up with Progress at the Bedford Academy Build Project

As you may be aware, Bedford Academy - formerly John Bunyan Upper School - is benefitting from a £25 million investment in completely new school buildings which will feature excellent facilities for its students. It's a major project and represents a huge investment in the education of the children and young people in the catchment area for the academy, but many people may simply be unaware of what's going on there and the progress that is being made on the new buildings. That's because the project involves the building of brand new buildings at the back of the current site, behind the present school buildings, which will be demolished when the construction work is finished and replaced with playing fields in the front of the site.

As I say, it really is a major project, and I am grateful to the School principal for letting me visit the ongoing works yesterday with colleagues Cllrs Anita Gerard and Sarah-Jayne Holland, and to the building site manager for showing us round and explaining what's going in where, and when. He also gave us some interesting bits and pieces of information about the project. For example, the steel structure, some of which can be seen behind us in the photo on the right, represents just about one-tenth of the steelwork that will be used for the project, believe it or not!