Willmott Dixon has secured one of the biggest construction projects awarded in Berkshire this year after agreeing a £32 million contract with West Berkshire Council to build a new home for St Bartholomew's School in Newbury.

The company will start on site on 14 April to create the new home for St Bart's, which was founded in 1466. The project involves replacing the existing school premises with a new, state-of-the-art building on the current site. Willmott Dixon has teamed up with architect Scott Brownrigg to work on the distinctive, flower shaped new school.

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One added advantage is that extra funding from the Low Carbon Schools Programme has enabled the school design to incorporate a host of features to increase energy efficiency and make it highly sustainable.

These features include a green roof, a biomass boiler using recycled wood chips to provide low carbon energy, plus achieving a BREEAM rating of excellent, the highest possible.

Mark Tant, Managing Director at Willmott Dixon's Cobham office which is carrying out the project, said: "We are delighted to have a start date for work to begin on delivering an exciting new home for St Barts. We will try where possible to award significant construction work packages to local companies in order to support the regional economy."

(CD/JM)