New 142-space car park to be built on site of closed Northumberland school

Northumberland County Council has applied for planning permission to create a total of 142 spaces, including eight disabled bays and six electric vehicle charging spaces, on the site of the now vacant Goosehill First School.

The authority’s property services team is in the process of arranging the demolition of the school buildings.

It is understood that these works are programmed to commence in January 2020 and will last for about 16 weeks.

The town-centre location is available for a new use after the long-awaited new first school in Morpeth opened at the start of the academic year in September to replace the 108-year-old Goosehill buildings.

The £6million development on the former fire-station site at Loansdean, near County Hall, provides a range of facilities which were not possible on the Goosehill site due to its limited space. For the first time in its history, the school now has its own playing fields.

The council approved the project in November 2017, at which point the total 25-year maintenance backlog for the former buildings was around £1.7million, with the value of work needing to be carried out in the next five years estimated to be £420,000.

An independent parking study, commissioned by the county council and carried out in 2017, concluded that a minimum increase of 150 spaces was recommended in Morpeth ‘in order to bring current occupancy levels down to an acceptable level’.