LocateED, the government-owned property company created to develop free schools in England, has submitted a planning application for a 122,000 sq ft digital skills school in Aldgate East, E1.
The school will cater for 1,570 pupils aged four-to-19, with 71 flats above. The site on Commercial Road is a former London Metropolitan University building. DCLG paid £53m for the site in June 2015.
The Livingstone Academy will have a focus on digital industries, and is named after Ian Livingstone, life president of Eidos and one of the UK’s founding fathers of interactive entertainment.
Planning documents reveal the schools emphasis will be on the “creative application of science and maths, developing computational thinking, but also the creativity and enterprising skills essential to success in the creative and digital economy”.
“Livingstone Academy East London has the potential of turning young people from digital consumers to digital makers and from job seekers to job creators. The academy’s vision is to set up a high performing school for students aged four-to-19 to be equipped with the skills and qualifications required to operate and play an active and successful role in today’s knowledge-based, interdependent, highly competitive, fast-changing digital world.”
There is no other all-through school of this type in the country apart from its planned partner school, Livingstone Academy Bournemouth. The scheme will also have a sports hall on the roof of a retained 10-storey building, together with new buildings rising to 16 storeys.
DCLG outbid Linden Homes, which was in talks to buy the site from London Mettropolitan University, which originally brought it to market in November 2013 with a circa £22m price tag.
LocatED was established in March 2017 to acquire land and buildings across the country to help the government build 610 new free schools by 2020 and create 600,000 new school places by 2021.
It has a £2bn budget, making it one the largest purchasers of land in the UK, and has requirements ranging from 10,000 to 175,000 sq ft.
The applicant’s agent is JLL.
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