Minutes:
The Council noted a report from Councillor A Hopgood, Leader of the Council as follows:
Councillor Hopgood said that since the last meeting she had attended the official opening of Belmont Community School and Belmont Church of England Primary School’s brand new, £40 million, shared campus. The state-of-the-art learning environment was funded by the council and could cater for more than 1,200 children and young people. It was also County Durham’s first low carbon school site, with each building equipped with solar panels and air-source heat pumps. The new facilities at Belmont followed significant investment we had made in school buildings across County Durham, most recently at Springmoor Grange at Spennymoor. Councillor Hopgood added that we were committed to providing children in County Durham with the best possible start in life. These may be challenging times, but investing in top-class facilities at Belmont was an investment absolutely worth making. It was an investment in children’s futures, now and for generations to come. It was also an investment in the community, as the new facilities at Belmont were expected to be worth more than £8 million in social value. This was the value of an organisation’s contribution to society beyond its ‘business as usual’ activities. At Belmont, this would include more than 1,000 hours of activities aimed at supporting young people into work and organising career sessions and apprenticeship weeks, and we would continue to support the teaching of our young people in this way wherever we could.