Pictured above: (l-r) Mike Walsh (Central Site Accommodation), Martin Boag (Yorkshire Bank) and Margaret James (Ellistown Community Primary School)

A new modular school extension costing £650,000 has been officially unveiled at a Leicestershire school. 

Parents and members of Leicestershire County Council were invited to an open day at Ellistown Community Primary School in Whitehill Road for the official opening of five new classrooms, hall, kitchen and toilets which has nearly doubled the size of the school.

The off-site modular building company, Central Site Accommodation, has been backed by Yorkshire Bank's Investing for Growth initiative.

Around 50 pupils visited Central Site Accommodation in Binley, Coventry, to see their new classrooms being built.

The bespoke designed modular building complete with carpets, lighting and heating was manufactured at the Coventry business before being transferred to the Coalville school ahead of the start of the school year in September.

Headteacher Margaret James said extra classrooms were needed since the school's number of pupils had nearly doubled over the last eight years.

"We are absolutely thrilled with the new classrooms," she said. "The school has been in need of additional classrooms for several years and we have been using traditional mobile classrooms but we needed something more permanent.

"This is just amazing. We had anticipated a year's worth of disruption while building work was carried out and we were really impressed that this was completed in the six week holidays.

"When parents brought their children back after the summer holiday they stood in the playground amazed that so much additional space had appeared." 

Mike Walsh from Central Site Accommodation said modular buildings provided much-needed cost savings as well as a shorter construction period.

"To do a project like this traditionally would have taken a construction company until around Christmas to build which would have caused disruption to the school and we completed it off site in eight weeks," he said.

"The hall has been designed to be a multi-function room. A specialist extractor system has been put in as it is used as a dining room and a hardened floor has been added as the children will be jumping up and down during their gym classes.

"Our on-site construction is no different to traditional construction and once the portable modular units were moved to the school, we used 23,000 bricks to complete the project to form pitches roofs and laid pathways, plants and undertook general landscaping.

"Off-site construction enables us to offer tremendous cost savings to our clients because we can deliver the high quality facilities they need in a quicker timescale which is vital with budgets being constrained."

Martin Boag, business partner at Yorkshire Bank's Financial Solutions Centre at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, said the new classrooms were a great place for the school's 230 pupils to learn.

He said: "The children seemed to really enjoy their visit to Central Site and this is such a great way of speeding up construction projects.

"Investing for Growth is an opportunity for Yorkshire Bank to help trading businesses invest in quality growth opportunities and it has enabled Central Site to increase its banking facilities to cope with its increasing workload on projects over the next few months."