Talks ongoing over potential new school for Chepstow

Talks are ongoing over a potential new school for Chepstow councillors have been told. 

A replacement for the comprehensive school has been described as the “last piece in the jigsaw” with Monmouthshire County Council having over the past decade provided new buildings for its other secondaries at Caldicot, Monmouth and Abergavenny. 

The King Henry VIII School in Abergavenny is the council’s first three to 19 school and replaces the existing secondary and two primary schools. 

Councillor Martyn Groucutt, the Labour cabinet member for education, said the keys to the new building in Abergavenny are set to be handed over to the council on April 11. 

Answering questions over the future of school buildings in Chepstow, from Conservative member for the town’s St Kingsmark ward Christopher Edwards, Cllr Groucutt said the council didn’t have the resources to start work as intended on Chepstow. 

But he said external architects have draw a “red line”, or development boundary, for the high school site and adjoining lesiure centre and meetings have taken place between the council and school to consider possibilities. 

It was also confirmed a Chepstow school project is the council’s priority in the plan submitted to the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Communities for Learning Programme, a nine-year rolling programme to fund new schools. 

But Cllr Groucutt said he would have to provide a written answer to Cllr Edwards on how that would be funded. Cllr Edwards said the Labour-led cabinet had scrapped the policy in place, when the Conservatives controlled the council, of ring-fencing funds from sales of council buildings for new schools. 

Cllr Edwards described Chepstow as “the last piece in the jigsaw of our schools”. 

The cabinet member said as well as overseeing the Abergavenny development council officers have been supporting the remodelling of a nursery in Trellech, conversion of a staff house at the former Mounton House School, near Chepstow, to a pupil referral unit and the new Welsh medium in Monmouth. 

He said numbers for pupils set to attend Ysgol Trefynwy next September “show the school is doing well”.