IN Brief:
- Conlon’s awarded contract is valued at £18.035m for Hope School’s relocation.
- Two new buildings will contain primary, secondary, therapy, and specialist teaching facilities.
- An existing two-storey block will be refurbished for administration and complex-needs accommodation.
Conlon Construction’s contract for the relocation of Hope School and College in Wigan has been formally confirmed through the latest procurement notice, following the contractor’s selection earlier in the summer. The £18.035m programme will deliver two new specialist teaching buildings at Central Park and refurbish an existing two-storey block for administration and pupils with the most complex needs.
Conlon Construction is delivering the project for Wigan Council at Montrose Avenue. Hope School and College serves children and young people with severe learning difficulties and profound and complex physical or medical needs from across the borough.
The first new building will provide 13 primary-age classrooms within approximately 2,387m² of accommodation. Its facilities will include a hydrotherapy pool, kitchen, rebound room, and reception offices, putting specialist care and therapy provision within the core construction scope rather than treating it as later equipment installation.
A second new building, extending to around 1,586m², will contain ten secondary classrooms, a dining hall, a reheat kitchen, and seven specialist resource rooms. The procurement documents identify facilities for art, food technology, ICT, and other specialist teaching uses.
The third main element involves the refurbishment of an existing two-storey building of around 1,455m². It will provide the main school administration facility together with accommodation for pupils whose needs require the most specialist support.
External works include a new car park, drop-off areas, playgrounds, and soft landscaping. Those works are particularly important for a SEND campus serving pupils from across Wigan because vehicle access and arrival arrangements form part of the daily operating requirement rather than a peripheral landscape package.
The procurement history requires some care because Conlon’s appointment did not originate with the September notice. Wigan Council approved acceptance of the successful contractor’s tender in June, and an award notice published in July identified Conlon Construction with an awarded value of £18,035,037.
The latest contract notice, published on 7 September, provides the fresh procurement milestone and confirms the contracted position. That distinction avoids presenting a two-month-old award as a new September selection while still recording a substantive step in the project’s transition into delivery.
The main works package follows earlier enabling activity intended to clear and prepare the Central Park site. Procurement documents issued during 2025 described the scheme as two new specialist SEND buildings plus refurbishment of the existing block, establishing a consistent scope through the tender and award process.
Hope School’s specialist facilities will place considerable coordination demands on the build. A hydrotherapy pool alone brings together structure, waterproofing, finishes, water treatment, heating, ventilation, drainage, maintenance access, and specialist equipment within a teaching environment. Those elements have to be coordinated with the wider building rather than installed as an isolated package.
The rebound room, specialist resource rooms, complex-needs accommodation, kitchens, and external arrival areas add further interfaces between building fabric, services, equipment, teaching requirements, and accessibility. With the school serving pupils aged across several educational phases, room layouts and circulation have to support different activities within one campus.
Refurbishing an existing building alongside two new-build blocks gives Conlon a mixed construction programme rather than three identical packages. Existing structure and services have to be integrated with the future campus while the new buildings can be developed around current standards and the detailed specialist brief.
Wigan Council has said the new Hope School is expected to open in September 2027 as part of wider investment intended to create additional SEND capacity across the borough. Current construction reporting places the main contract programme through to the end of July 2027, leaving the period before opening for completion, commissioning, occupation preparation, and final operational work.
The Central Park project is therefore entering delivery with its contractor, value, and principal accommodation schedule now established. The measure of the scheme will be less the headline £18m than whether two new teaching blocks, a substantial refurbishment, specialist therapy spaces, and the external campus can be completed as one functioning school in time for the planned 2027 opening.
