Little Acorns Playgroup Building Refurbishment

Description

Little Acorns Preschool has been located in our current building on the grounds of Penponds School since March 2004. During this time the preschool has become widely used by members of the local communities of Penponds and Barripper and those from further afield. The preschool has grown in popularity due to the fact that it is led by a qualified teacher and forest school leader and also the excellent provision for SEND children. Our partnership with parents is excellent and we have built up a good committee who assist in the running of the preschool. The building is over twenty years old and consequently, in spite of constant maintenance, is visibly deteriorating. Upon entering the preschool, you cannot escape the fact that the building is damp due to the odour. This also prevents preschool staff accessing all available spaces which in turn is putting a limit on how many spaces we can offer; we have the option to have 24 children per day, currently on our busiest session we have 16 children. It is the opinion of staff and committee members that the appearance of the building is incredibly off-putting to potential new families. Due to the limitation of space, we cannot provide a break out space for our children with ASD.tions. Our SENDCo comes highly recommended by outside agencies such as CDC staff whom she regularly works alongside, due to her qualifying with the NASEN accredited level 3 SENDCo award in September 2020. We do not want to continue to be in a position whereby we cannot fully meet the needs of children with SEND and in particular ASD, because we cannot provide them with a sensory / breakout space; the room we used in the past is simply too damp. Making improvements to the building would mean that we could offer more SEND spaces and in doing so, we would be able to employ new staff members / increase the hours of existing staff members. In 2022 we had a new roof installed. Unfortunately, the building is still damp and deteriorating in spite of this. We do not feel that the building will be usable for much longer if no improvements are made. The purchase of this system is part of a grant funded application process and therefore procurement will be subject to grant approval of the project. We will assess tenders received on a Most Economically Advantageous Tender.