Contract for £55m Trinity Academy school extension and renovation works awarded to construction firm

A £55m contract has been awarded for renovation works and the construction of a new building at an Edinburgh high school.

Belfast-based construction firm McLaughlin & Harvey has been contracted to build the extension to Trinity Academy in Leith and refurbish an existing Victorian building.

Plans to renovate and expand the school have been ongoing for several years, with the first stage of the project – involving a new sports and recreation facility – opening in 2022.

A ward councillor has said she is “really pleased” with the planned improvements, and that she looks forward to the public space on the site that will be open to the community.

The expansion of Trinity Academy, which is fed by three primary schools, will expand its capacity from 950 to 1,200.

A planning application for the school’s redevelopment was submitted by the council in October 2023.

The original red sandstone Victorian building at the western end of the school, built in 1894, will be retained and undergo refurbishment.

Meanwhile, several of the other structures on the site, built after the original building, will be demolished

A new four-storey extension to the original building will be built in their place, with a red brick and metal exterior.

Both the extension and the sports facility have been designed by architecture firm Holmes Miller, which has designed several primary schools in the city.

Green councillor Kayleigh Kinross-O’Neill, who represents Forth ward, said: “We’re really pleased to see the next step of Trinity’s expansion go ahead, as I know most parents and teachers are too.

“I’m especially looking forward to seeing the outdoor learning facilities and other wellbeing features that can be used by the wider community.”

The works will be carried out in phases in order to allow teaching to continue while the works are under way.

A temporary teaching space will be built to the south of the school, first allowing the teaching in two of the newer buildings on the site to be moved there.

They will then be demolished, and the extension will be built in their place.

The teaching in the two demolished blocks will then be moved back into the extension, and the teaching in the Victorian-era building will be moved out for it to be refurbished.

Once the refurbishment is complete, all teaching will be returned to the new and refurbished parts of the site, and the three remaining buildings in the east of the site will be demolished, to be replaced with an outdoor space.

The outdoor design at the site will integrate Trinity Academy’s grounds with those of Trinity Primary, creating a unified campus within the community.

The open space would be open to the public and feature outdoor teaching areas.

Passivhaus standards were used in the design of the extension, which aims to keep the temperature of the buildings comfortable while using as little energy as possible.

Builders McLaughlin & Harvey were also contracted to build the Wester Hailes High School, which is set to be completed in late 2026.

Elsewhere in the city, they have built several structures for the University of Edinburgh, including the Nucleus student hub and a new building for the School of Engineering at the university’s King’s Buildings site.

Between 2018 and 2022, the firm’s waste subsidiary was locked in a legal battle with Revenue Scotland over landfill taxes.

Barr Environmental Ltd operated two landfills in Scotland, including one in Ayrshire, as well as a plant to recycle waste.

In 2021, Revenue Scotland slapped the firm with a £99m fine, saying it had wrongfully not paid landfill tax on materials recycled from the Ayrshire landfill to build walls on site.

The company said that, because the materials were recycled, they should be exempt from the landfill tax.

Recycling waste through their recycling plant was part of the firm’s business model in the waste processing space, with the hope it would drive costs down for its local authority clients.

A lower tribunal found against the firm, but Barr appealed to the Upper Tribunal and won, with a tribunal judge saying that “there is nothing wrong with principle” with what the company did.

Barr no longer operates waste facilities in Scotland, having pulled out of the sector ahead of the impending landfill ban.

The contract was closed on March 19 and published on June 27.