School where pupils wear coats in winter still waiting for double glazing - seven months on

A Hertfordshire school with a £45,000 a year energy bill is still waiting for double glazing seven months after planning permission was received for the work to be carried out. Pupils at Grade II at Templewood Primary School in Welwyn Garden City have students wear coats indoors in winter because it is so cold. The school has been looking forward to installing new windows since permission was granted in September.

But Hillary Skoczylas, chair of the school's governing board, has told The Local Democracy Reporting Service that Hertfordshire County Council has not yet found funding for the windows or completed the surveys required for work to begin. Ms Skoczylas said: “Things are moving forward, but very slowly. “[The county council] spent a bit of time investigating other options beyond those in the listed building consent, and submitting those to the [borough council’s] planning department, who threw it out because it’s not in the consent.



The county council said that they needed to do that to show they had considered all aspects and value for money. “They spent a good couple of months doing that and putting that piece of work together, to submit it to Welwyn Hatfield, who said no. It is moving, but not at the greatest of speeds.

We still have no idea of when this work might even begin.” Before work can commence, full details and drawings for the proposed new windows need to be submitted to Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council and approved by them. But Ms Skoczylas says the county council is “only now just starting to do the surveys that are needed”.

“We’ve got no timeline, and we’re constantly told this is going to be a huge budget problem. We don’t know how we’re going to do it,” she adds. A spokesperson for Hertfordshire County Council said it was “working through a number of complex planning conditions that need to be discharged before the scheme can progress.

” They continued: “Once the planning conditions have been discharged, we will be able to establish the actual cost of replacing the windows. A decision on funding would then need to be considered alongside funding bids from other schools, and would need to be approved by the Schools Forum.” The listed building consent granted in September requires construction work to begin within three years.

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