Balfour Beatty has been selected to build a £67.8m Passivhaus-accredited secondary school in Edinburgh.
The UK’s largest contractor will build a replacement campus for Liberton High School, whose existing building is being demolished after a 12-year-old girl was crushed to death when a wall collapsed in 2014.
The mixed-use campus (pictured) will centre on a three-storey building and provide space for 1,200 students. The school will be built to Passivhaus sustainability standards, in line with the city’s 2030 net-zero target, meaning it will require little heating or cooling.
Plans for the new campus include a public library, community cafe, dance studio, fitness centre, 3G pitch, grassed amphitheatre and flexible workspace.
Edinburgh councillor Joan Griffiths said: “The Liberton Community Campus is a really exciting project, which provides an amazing opportunity to create – as part of an inclusive net-zero carbon city – a community lifelong-learning and sports hub to replace the existing school.”
An earlier plan to include a 10,000-patient-capacity GP surgery in the scheme was put on hold in February after NHS Lothian paused its capital spending.
Liberton High School is one of 22 new schools funded in the second phase of the Learning Estate Investment Programme, an £800m effort by the Scottish Government and local authorities to rebuild education infrastructure.
