Bury Council shows plans for a new Ash Grove alternative provision school in Radcliffe on 29 September. It would merge the school's two sites into one building.

Bury Council wants to build a new school in Radcliffe for the borough’s most vulnerable secondary pupils, and it will show residents the plans next week.

The drop-in is on Tuesday 29 September, from 5pm to 8pm, at the Growing Together Radcliffe Centre on Westminster Avenue, M26 3WD. It comes before any planning application is lodged. The council says feedback will be considered “as proposals are developed ahead of submission of a planning application”, so this is the stage at which objections and ideas are cheapest to act on.

The building would house the Ash Grove Alternative Provision Academy. That is not a new school. Ash Grove already exists, and it already teaches in Radcliffe. The proposal is to stop it working out of two buildings several miles apart.

What Ash Grove is

Ash Grove School is Bury’s alternative provision academy for pupils aged 11 to 16: the school for young people who have been permanently excluded, are at risk of exclusion, or need something a mainstream classroom cannot give them.

It is run by the Oak Learning Partnership, the multi-academy trust based at Blackley Close in Unsworth, which also runs Elms Bank, Philips High, Hazel Wood, Unsworth Primary, Fairfield Community Primary and Holcombe Brook Primary in the borough.

The Department for Education’s register records, as confirmed on 2 September 2026:

  • 109 pupils on roll
  • 77 of them eligible for free school meals, which is 70.6%
  • an age range of 11 to 16, mixed
  • an opening date of 1 January 2025

It has not been inspected by Ofsted. The school says so itself: “As a newly registered school, Ash Grove has not had an Ofsted inspection yet.”

The two sites the plan would replace

The school’s own contact page gives two addresses, and the phone menu has a separate option for each.

Site Where What is taught there
New Kershaw Centre Deal Street, Bury, BL9 7PZ Maths, English, PSHRE, food technology, PE
Whittaker Street Radcliffe, M26 2TD Construction, hospitality, hair and beauty, sport and leisure

New Kershaw takes pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs who have been permanently excluded or are at risk of it, and the school says it has adapted to take more pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan. The school day there runs from 8.50am to 1.30pm, which the school gives as 23 hours 20 minutes a week.

Whittaker Street is the vocational half. The school describes industry-style rooms: construction workshops, a commercial-standard training kitchen, salon facilities and a fitness suite, with English, maths and a preparation for adulthood strand alongside the vocational qualification.

So a pupil’s week can be split between two buildings 2.9 miles apart in a straight line, one in Bury East ward and one in Radcliffe East. That is measured from the coordinates the ONS Postcode Directory gives for BL9 7PZ and M26 2TD. Councillor Sandra Walmsley, cabinet member for children and young people, said the plan “would create a dedicated facility where specialist teaching, support and resources can be brought together”.

The number the register shows

Ash Grove replaced Spring Lane School, the borough’s secondary pupil referral unit, which opened in September 1997 and closed on 31 December 2024 at the same Deal Street address. The reason the register gives for the closure is “For Academy”.

Comparing the two records shows one thing clearly. Spring Lane recorded 117 pupils and 54.7% eligible for free school meals. Ash Grove records 109 pupils and 70.6%. Fewer pupils, and a far poorer intake among them. Free school meal eligibility is the standard measure of disadvantage in English schools, and on this site it has risen by almost 16 percentage points either side of the change.

Spring Lane was registered for 136 places. The council has not published how many places the new building would have.

What the council has not said

The press release runs to several hundred words and does not contain any of the following:

  • where in Radcliffe the school would be built
  • how many places it would have
  • what it would cost, or where the money comes from
  • when it would open
  • whether the Deal Street and Whittaker Street buildings would be kept, sold or reused

We asked the same questions of the public record. There is no planning application to read yet, because the council says the engagement comes before one is submitted. We could not search the borough’s planning register directly today: the results pages at planning.bury.gov.uk returned an error to us, though the register itself is normally readable.

That makes the drop-in the only place those answers currently exist. The council says residents there will be able to meet the project design team and education partners as well as council officers.

What it means for you

  • If you live near the Growing Together Centre or anywhere in Radcliffe, go on 29 September. Pre-application engagement is the stage where a design can still move. Once an application is validated, the argument narrows to planning grounds.
  • If your child attends Ash Grove, the questions worth asking are about places, transport between sites in the meantime, and what happens to the vocational rooms at Whittaker Street.
  • If you want to object or support later, watch the Bury planning news page. Nothing has been lodged yet, and a pre-application session is not a consultation on an application.
  • The session is a drop-in, 5pm to 8pm, so there is no set start time to miss.

Sources