PLANS have been submitted to build a huge new 900 pupil capacity high school on green belt land in Great Lever.

Kings Leadership Academy is proposed to be built close to Freshfield Avenue and the Great Lever and Farnworth golf course.

The Royal Bolton Hospital site lies to the south of the area.

Plans submitted to Bolton Council by the Department for Education (DfE) describe ‘a secondary school which would be a free school for pupils aged 11-16 with approximately 900 students, with additional social spaces, external games areas and playing fields’.

The design and access statement for the plans, states: “The existing site is currently green belt land.

“The proposed development location is bound by Freshfield Avenue and residential streets to the north, an existing school to the west, a golf course to the south and open fields to the east.

“The plans deliberately excludes the majority of the tree-lined ditch and brook due to the ecological and landscape sensitivity.”

If approved, the school will be mostly manufactured off-site so that disruption during the construction phase is minimised

The statement said that the plans had already been the subject of discussions with the Bolton Council.

The application adds: “The site is currently comprised of open green fields and is used by dog walkers and horse riders.

“The sensitivities surrounding the site have been fully considered throughout the design development.”

Bolton Council directed the DfE to the particular council-owned site as it considers it suitable, in principle, for Kings Leadership Academy following the appraisal of a number of sites within the borough

and a previous failed attempt to garner support for a school site at Wigan Road.

The school opened in September 2019 temporary in accommodation elsewhere in Great Lever.

On opening, it had 173 children on its roll and the school’s ethos was to ‘give young people in Great Lever the opportunity to experience all the benefits of a public school education without the hefty price tag’.

The report expand on the ‘modular’ off site construction of the school should it be approved.

It said: “In meetings with Bolton Council, they have advised that any new building should be of the highest design quality.

“They also advised that they were comfortable with a modular approach to construction.

“Modular buildings are pre-engineered unit modules manufactured off site.

“Modules are delivered to site and assembled to form a building.

“An average school is made of 40 modules, each modular school will save 155,821 miles of car driving or 17 flights from London to Sydney.

“Modular schools create 50 per cent lower emissions than traditionally built schools.”

The school is operated by The Great School Trust which has schools in Liverpool and Warrington.

The Bolton School is the trust’s third school

Kings leadership Liverpool and Warrington both underwent recent Ofsted inspections and were judged as ‘good’.

The plans will be decided on by the council’s planning committee at a date yet to be decided.