23rd January 2026
When Harcourt School was first proposed, residents were repeatedly assured that the project would cost £5.68 million. That figure was used to justify the choice of site and to dismiss concerns raised by parents and local residents.
The school eventually opened in 2011 — at a final cost of around £11 million.
This was not an unforeseeable overrun. It was the predictable outcome of presenting a partial and misleading estimate as if it were the full cost of a working school.
The £5.68m figure never represented the true cost. It covered only the basic structure of the building — effectively a school with no access roads, no hard play areas, no drainage, no services, no external works and no allowances for the realities of the site itself. When the correct question was asked in 2005 — “What is the total cost of the school?” — the answer was already clear: £7.5 million, even before construction began.
That £7.5m included unavoidable costs such as drainage, abnormal foundations, external works, contingencies and substantial professional fees. These were not optional extras; they were the price of forcing a school onto a constrained and problematic site.
And even that figure proved optimistic. By the time the school opened, costs had risen to circa £11m, driven by contamination issues, traffic mitigation, infrastructure works and the long-term consequences of building on land that was never well suited to a large educational facility.
This raises a serious question: why was this site chosen at all?
At the time, an alternative site was available — uncontaminated, with better access, fewer traffic issues and space for future expansion. That option would have avoided many of the extraordinary costs that later emerged.
But that site was earmarked for something else.
Instead of being used for a school, it was sold off for housing development, generating capital receipts for the council. The school, meanwhile, was pushed onto a far more difficult site, with costs quietly escalating long after the original decision had been approved.
Had the true, realistic cost of the Harcourt School been presented at the outset — not the headline figure, but the inevitable total — the decision-making process would have looked very different. Councillors and residents alike would have been forced to weigh whether saving a development site for housing was worth millions of pounds in additional public spending, permanent traffic problems, and a school with limited scope to grow.
This was not simply a case of “costs rising”. It was a case of choosing to understate costs, choosing a problematic site, and choosing short-term financial gain over long-term public value.
The Harcourt School stands today not just as a place of education, but as a reminder of what happens when financial convenience is allowed to override transparency, planning sense and the interests of the community.
council communications, but they are not clear headshots:
Wed 20/02/2008 15:00
Dear Mrs Oliver
Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This has been given reference FOI 974. Please quote this on any correspondence.
Stockport Council will respond to your request within 20 working days. If there will be a fee or a charge for disbursements, we will inform you as soon as possible; however any charge will normally be waived if it amounts to less than £10.
Yours sincerely,
Sara Barnard
From: sheilaoliver [mailto:sheilaoliver@ntlworld.com]
Sent: 18 February 2008 21:18
To: FOI Officer
Cc: Cllr Mark Weldon; John Schultz
Subject: Executive Meeting
Dear FOI Officer
In response to a public question at tonight’s executive meeting Cllr Weldon agreed that there were costs over and above the £5,400,000 stated building cost for the Harcourt Street School known to the Council as early as December 2005 – almost £300,000 of these costs would not have arisen had the Fir Tree site been used for the school. The Harcourt Street site was chosen on cost grounds and because local parents wanted it, although the Council possesses no evidence that local parents wanted it.
So, please may I see the documentary evidence of the financial workings out that the Harcourt Street site was financially a better option than the Fir Tree site. This should be interesting.
Kind regards
Sheila
