Lancing school opens state-of-the-art sports hall packed with environmentally friendly and eco sensitive features

Environmentally friendly and eco sensitive, the sports hall has been designed with a number of sustainable building features, feeding into the children's education.

It will also make a huge difference to their activities, as the school had been struggling with space for PE with pupil numbers ever increasing.

Head Lee Murley explained the background during the opening ceremony on Thursday, July 6, and a celebration school summer picnic with staff, governors, parents and children followed.

Mr Murley said: "The idea of creating a new sports hall is something I had joked about and never dreamed that we could afford it. It has taken six years to get where we are today."

The sports hall was opened by Mary McGregor in memory of Peter McGregor, an Ofsted inspector who became a mentor and friend of the school.

Mr Murley explained McGregor was the lead inspector during the Ofsted visit of 2012 and this had begun 'a very positive set of events', including his own appointment as head at Seaside in January 2013.

Mr Murley said: "Over the next two years, Peter challenged and supported the school in equal measures, not as an Ofsted inspector but as a person who wanted the best for the children, the parents and the staff."

The school was graded Outstanding in July 2015 and Peter then challenged Mr Murley to 'trust his guts' on the next big thing. A year later, New Horizons Academy Trust was set up.

It was thanks to Peter's support in suggesting a school appeal and looking at charitable donations that the sports hall project got off the ground.

Architect Melissa Hitchcock from Burns Guthrie and Partners explained some of the features she incorporated into the sustainable building to help reduce the carbon footprint.

She said: "There is no steel frame, the structure is mass timber or cross-laminated. The timber sequests CO2 from the atmosphere when it grows. If this was a building with a steel frame, then the embodied carbon would be 100 tons. The timber alone is only 45 tons but if you take into account the 30 tons sequested from the atmosphere, there is only 15 tons of embodied carbon.

"Also, timber is a warm material, it looks natural and the human response to that is more favourable.

"The windows are principally on the east side, so there will be solar gain, which will help in heating the building. On the south side, the roof projects so it creates a shadow on the wall, so it means there is no direct solar gain.

"I feel that here we have a school teaching children about the environment and here is a demonstrative way to set an example."

Other features include underfloor heating using air source heat pumps and natural ventilation that is cleverly controlled by the temperature and carbon dioxide levels in the hall.