1st September 2026
Newly examined internal documents from late 2005 and early 2006 lay bare how initial cost estimates for the North Reddish primary school and children’s centre scheme were incomplete, the planned building grew substantially in size, and a multi-million-pound budget was locked in before full site investigations were complete.
The notes, headed “North Reddish Project,” record a sequence of decisions that later proved costly. On 21 January 2005 a request was made for a square-metre rate for a single-storey building, including extra foundations, based on a floor area of 2,600 m². The rate was drawn from a comparable scheme at Brindale and updated for 2006, with no addition for Part L energy regulations.
Five days later an email from Andy MacKenzie to Julie Moran set out figures that deliberately excluded all external works, football pitches, tennis courts, drainage, highway improvements, environmental measures, design fees and land purchase. Those omissions were only brought back into the calculations in a first full estimate dated 12 December 2005. By then the floor area had risen to 3,443 m² — an increase of 843 m², or roughly one-third.
A Children’s Centre Sub-Group meeting on 5 December 2005 was held to settle the scheme details. The Project Initiation Document and brief were finalised by 30 December 2005, with the budget fixed under item 2.3.4 at £5,736,649. Subsequent cost lines listed in the notes included an increase for landscaping (£236,995, marked with a question mark), additional Part L regulations (£100,000), foundations (£382,200, also queried), electric and telephone connections (£20,000) and a sewer connection (£10,000).
At the same time the council commissioned key technical work: Faber Munsell to begin traffic studies in January/February 2006 with a report due in April; a topographical survey in December 2005; and ground investigation starting in January 2006 that included six months of gas monitoring. An initial brief had already been received before the formal PID.
These early papers sit against a well-documented backdrop. The scheme aimed to replace North Reddish infant and junior schools and Fir Tree primary with a new 600-pupil school, nursery and children’s centre on the Harcourt Street playing field — a former clay extraction pit later used as a tip. A £2.2 million government grant had been awarded in 2004. Local residents and then-MP Andrew Gwynne raised repeated concerns that the site’s industrial history had not been properly acknowledged. Initial soil tests found no contamination, but further investigations in 2006 and 2009 identified elevated levels of lead, arsenic and asbestos, with some readings reported at up to eight times safe limits. Remediation and protective measures became necessary, and by 2013 public reports put the projected final bill at £8.6 million amid lengthy delays.
The internal chronology shows how the project’s cost base expanded while significant site risks were still being quantified. Whether the early omissions and the decision to fix the budget before the ground investigation results were fully known contributed to the later overruns remains a matter of record for those who managed the scheme. What the notes make plain is that the warning signs of rising costs and incomplete scope were already visible by the end of 2005.
