Plans for £60m Dundee super-school due to open in 2025 set to be approved

Dundee City Council is set to approve designs for a £60m school campus in the city’s East End.

Permission is expected to be granted for the new East End Community Campus at a sitting of the council’s planning committee on Monday.

If approved, construction of the campus will be on the site of the former St Saviours High School and is intended to replace Craigie High School and Braeview Academy.

These schools would merge at the new site in August 2025, where an anticipated 1,879 pupils would attend.

St Saviours, formerly attended by Olympic silver medallist runner Liz McColgan, shut down in 2008. Demolition of this site was completed in 2011.

The new £60m school merger was approved by city councillors in January last year but the full designs are now set to be runner stamped.

Objections were raised over the possible impact to local wildlife and increased levels of traffic in the area.

However, an ecologist conducted a study and according to council documents, concluded the land is “largely limited in biodiversity terms” and, in terms of habitats, is “not of high ecological value.”

Similarly, the council’s head of sustainable transport and roads, Ewan Macnaughton, is satisfied with travel and transport access.

A report to Monday’s planning committee states: “The proposed development is anticipated to have no significant impact on the local or trunk road network.”

It is also noted that the site previously contained St Saviours and this similar former use of the site would have generated a degree of traffic and activity in the surrounding area.

The planned 143-hectare site would include a 137 space staff and visitor car park, two floodlit sports pitches and courts.

Braeview Academy was badly damaged in a fire in 2018 while Craigie High is one of the oldest school buildings in Scotland.

The campus plans are in accordance with the council’s 2019 development plan.

This is the long-term framework for all development and construction throughout Dundee until and beyond 2029.

It is part of a £382m council capital programme focused on improving schools and improving the sustainability of its buildings.

Local firm, Robertson Construction will be responsible for the build.

A three-day exhibition of architects’ drawings for the new East End Community Campus was held in February as part of a pre-application consultation process.