Tipton St John Primary School rebuild given priority status

Tipton St John Primary School has been given ‘Group 1’ status as part of the Department for Education’s School Rebuilding Programme following Simon Jupp MP’s campaign to relocate the school to a safer site.

Working with the Department for Education, Diocese of Exeter, Devon County Council and the local school leadership team, the East Devon MP has called for a new school to be built due to a risk of flooding which led to children and staff being evacuated by the fire service in May.

Group 1 status, reserved for urgent cases by the government, speeds up the project as per a specific request by the East Devon MP. It follows Simon Jupp’s June meeting in East Devon with a senior government official from the School Rebuilding Programme in which he made the case for work to begin as soon as possible.

In December, the Department for Education confirmed the necessary funding to build the school in a safe location would come from the government’s School Rebuilding Programme after a long campaign by the MP. Since then, Simon Jupp MP has also held urgent meetings with Education Minister Baroness Barran following May’s flooding incident and raised the school’s plight in Parliament with Schools Minister Nick Gibb MP.

Simon Jupp, MP for East Devon, said; "I have been calling for this decision since the Conservative government agreed to fund the building of a new school in December. I have raised the urgency of the situation in Parliament, met with Ministers several times, and successfully secured a visit from the Department for Education last month to look at potential sites. This is another great step forward to build a new state-of-the-art school in a safe location.”