27/10/09 - Thomas Vale Celebrate School Opening

The guided tour allowed the teachers and children to showcase their brand new innovative £6.5 million ‘Church of England’ aided school to the public after being awarded a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’ earlier on in the year.

St Luke’s which comprises of over 400 pupils once operated on a split site with infants on one site and the junior school on the other around a mile away. Land became available for the school when tower blocks on the old Blakenhall Gardens Estate were demolished.

Kevin Zamur, Construction Manager, Thomas Vale Constrcution commented: “Thomas Vale Construction are extremely pleased and proud to have been part of the Team which delivered this prestigious project to Wolverhampton City Council which was completed on the due date to enable the existing Infants and Junior School to decant as planned.”

Alison Grennan, St Luke’s School commented: “The building has worked out just as we had hoped, if not better! The building has been so well designed and built that we have a range of flexible working spaces that will suit our needs for many years to come. We have a school that is the envy of many, a special and inspiring building that children want to learn in. The amount of light and the spacious feeling that the building delivers are aspects that everyone remarks upon. Children and parents have described the new school as a tardis, as from the outside the building is quite deceiving. Yet on the inside, there is an abundance of space, more than we could ever have imagined. The timber has a calming influence on everyone.”

The design as well as the choice of building materials has made the school highly energy efficient, allowing a lot of natural daylight into the centre of the school. A vast amount of environmental features have been incorporated into the school including the timber frame, a biomass boiler and a timber shingle roof.

During the build process Thomas Vale arranged for escorted visits for the teachers and the children to view progress and get an understanding of individual elements of the works, this enabled the children to contribute in the way of artwork and manifestation to internal areas and external windows. A ‘Natural Room’ has been made for the children, to help them understand about plants and other environmental issues. Further to the success of the St Luke’s School, Thomas Vale has secured projects at Blakenhall Neighbourhood Centre and Staunton on Wye School.