CCHS Expansion 2021

New Gym and Classrooms @ CCHS

Over the past few years, the number of students attending CCHS has steadily risen, due to the growing size of the local population. This number is forecast to increase, yet further, over the forthcoming years, with many local primary schools close to capacity. At CCHS, we continually plan for the future, aiming to drive up standards and improve outcomes for all of the children in the local area, this includes improvements to the school site and environment. The CCHS Sixth Form moved to Tendring Education Centre in September 2020, when it became Sigma Sixth Tendring, and this has allowed for some re-modelling of parts of the school to gradually accommodate additional students. The next part of our expansion on our Walton Road site is now complete, providing our students with a four-court sports hall and six additional classrooms.

Follow the build process below.........


L-Block is now complete

January 2022 - Just before the end of the year Morgan Sindall, our building contractors, handed over the keys to our new sports hall and teaching block. After the ‘ground was broken’, at the end of April last year, it took just under seven months for the buildings to be completed. Over the coming weeks the finishing touches will be added including the necessary IT equipment, white boards and video projectors in the teaching rooms, with the hope that we can ‘move in’ around the February half-term. 
The new entrance gates at the rear of the school are already in use at the start and end of the day, as well as our new bike racks for students who cycle to school; we now have bike storage facilities at the front and rear of the school allowing the main school site to be a ‘bike free zone’. 
A number of students have already had the opportunity to see inside the new sports hall, which is virtually twice the size of our existing gym, with PE classes already using the fantastic new facilities. The new building not only provides us with an additional six classrooms and sports area, but during exam periods it will now allow whole year groups to sit public examinations in one location, instead of being split the school hall and gym and creates a dedicated exam area in school.


Nearing Completion Second and Final Fitting

November 2021 - our new 'L-Block', as it will be known, is nearing completion and we are anticipating a handover from the builders at either the end of this term or the start of the next in January.  The new building includes will enhance the CCHS facilities with six new classrooms and a huge 4-court sports hall.
Work is now taking place to connect a number of services and IT systems to the main school; this week the final sections of tarmac were completed and the court markings in the sports hall are also scheduled soon.
There will still be an amount of work to be completed once we have the ‘keys’ as the new teaching rooms will need to be furnished and made ready before the grand opening.
The new build is heated with a state-of-the-art air source underfloor heating system and the roof of the sports hall is covered in solar panels.  


The Build Time-Lapse & The Modular Classrooms arrive on site

July 2021 - The module building blocks are lifted into position.


Gym structure starts to take shape

June 2021 - The size and shape of the gym can now be visualised with the steel work in place. Following the completion of the ground works, the contactors prepared special areas for siting the heavy equipment ahead of the arrival of the crane and sky-lifts. This has enabled the steelworkers to lift and bolt the framework together, just like a life-sized Meccano set. The team have had fantastic weather for the majority of the steel work construction and have progressed rapidly.


The Build Process

Stage 1 - Substructure process - Contractor Storyboard from Morgan Sindall


Stage 1b - Substructure process continued


Stage 1c - Substructure process continued


Stage 2 - The Superstructure


Stage 3 - The Enveloping process


Stage 4 - The Finishing process