Project Overview
Ysgol Robert Owen in Newtown, Powys, is a purpose-built school for 3–18-year-olds with additional learning needs. Replacing Ysgol Cedewain, it offers a secure, inclusive environment combining education and therapy.
The design features a central courtyard, low-impact massing, and sustainable systems including air-source heat pumps and solar panels. SuDS-compliant landscaping enhances ecology and pupil wellbeing.
Early design development was undertaken by Kier under a Powys JV arrangement to optimise the design development, before the project transitioned to a Design and Build contract post RIBA Stage 2.
The school exemplifies high-quality public sector architecture, environmental responsibility, and community integration.
The two-storey layout places younger children on the ground floor to ensure easy access to external teaching and play areas. A central courtyard provides a secure, climate-moderated outdoor learning space, enhancing both wellbeing and wayfinding. Wide corridors and a clearly defined circulation route support intuitive navigation throughout the school.
Key features include a large canopy over the drop-off zone, a welcoming reception area that opens into a split hall and dining space, and general teaching classrooms arranged around the courtyard. Specialist features include a hydrotherapy pool, rebound room, and sensory rooms on each floor. The external landscape, designed in collaboration with a landscape architect, includes shared play elements accessible to the neighbouring primary school.
Community engagement was central to the project’s development. Building on the site’s 50-year legacy as a special needs school, early stakeholder consultation led to the inclusion of a community café and a dedicated parents’ room, reinforcing the school’s role as a community hub.
Sustainability is at the heart of the design. The building is carbon-free in use, with heating—including for the hydrotherapy pool—provided entirely by roof-mounted air source heat pumps. The remaining roof area contains a large PV array to help offset demand.
Design Excellence
The building’s design journey began with Kier’s design team, engaged through the Powys Joint Venture, developing Concept Design Proposals. This approach enabled early and meaningful engagement with stakeholders, resulting in a refined brief and the expansion of the scheme to include five additional class bases.
The general placement of the building supports simple safeguarding, with the school’s reception the focus of arrivals and departures. There are large water mains beneath the car park, which together with the position of existing school buildings determined the overall position of the building on site.
Architecturally, the form of the building deals sensibly with the accommodation schedule, providing the larger single storey elements to the east and the arrival point, with the two-storey classes grouped around the courtyard to the west. The elevational treatment is sensitively handled to mitigate between the residential estate to the north, and larger light industrial units to the south.
The choice of a simple material palette with contemporary detailing creates a high standard of architectural quality that establishes a new sense of place and visual identity for the school.
Landscape Integration
The form and massing of the building is tied into the Newtown site with a strong landscaping design that provides a wide range of formal and informal external areas to support the teaching and social play activities. The landscaping concept was developed around the transition from rural features around the edge of the site creating natural shelter belts, to more formal spaces around the classrooms for more structured learning and play activities.
This transition of space has been inspired by the way that the school operates and carries out day-to-day activities. By creating different spaces around the school site for Forest School activities, games, learning in small groups the design provides flexible spaces with different characters and purposes
The extensive planting scheme is already showing the benefit of a strong design, which will only deepen as it becomes established. Stakeholder engagement with pupils and staff indicated the value placed on existing features within the school grounds, and these have been retained and worked into the overall site plan, alongside new outdoor play equipment.
Delivery
The procurement route chosen by Powys provided the best balance between design control and cost-effective design. By undertaking the early design stages using an extended internal team, designs were progressed and tested before engaging a design and build contractor, who was then able to develop the construction technologies using their preferred techniques and supply chains. The contractor chose a design team with good expertise in ALN and landscaping, and this was reflected in their technical scoring.
Powys chose to use SEWSCAP as a tried-and-tested framework, to speed procurement and ensure that a high-quality threshold was maintained for tendering contractors. A 2-stage approach was chosen, using the NEC Professional Services Contract as a mechanism to develop the design and pricing. This allowed effective management of the contract as it progressed, with the project being delivered within its cost envelope.
The new school building was built on a school playing field within a secure perimeter, and once completed the existing buildings were demolished to form a new MUGA and playing field. This approach provided simple separation during construction and retained the pre-existing car parking for use by staff to supplement the visitors parking and drop off to the front of the school.
Additional Areas
Ysgol Robert Owen was built to cater for children with a wide range of complex needs including Autism Spectrum Disorder and Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties. In order to ensure that the design met these needs, the contractor included an educationalist who had previously worked as an ALN head within their design team, to act as a critical friend and support the school management team during the design development. This allowed a higher level of discussion, improved confidence, and extended from the overall planning into detailed discussion over furniture. Scenarios considering ‘a day in the life of’ were considered to ensure all stakeholders were considered within the design development.
The school contains several specialist rooms, including a hydrotherapy pool with sensory lighting and sound systems, further sensory rooms on each floor of the building, a soft play room, and a trampoline rebound room.
Community engagement
With over 50 years of history on the site, Ysgol Robert Owen is deeply rooted in the local community, and several features were included to maintain and develop these strong relationships. Following early consultation, a community café was included alongside a parent’s room to provide a welcoming arrival point and an encouragement for public engagement with the school, alongside a transparent secure line.
The school site is also adjacent to one of Newtown’s primary schools and the external works design locates the MUGA and playing field alongside the shared boundary, so that the facilities can be shared by the schools and the wider community outside of school hours.
Environmental Design
The new school is delivered under Welsh Government’s flagship C21st Schools Programme, and benefits from improved thermal performance of the external fabric. It is designed to be carbon free in use, with all heating for the building and hydrotherapy pool provided by roof-mounted air-source heat pumps. Alongside, to help reduce the electrical load, is a large, 600m² solar array.
Following the building’s completion there has been considerable post-occupancy evaluation to ensure the building operates as intended as part of an extended soft-landings process. The data gained here and from other recent projects will allow Powys to continue its design strategy evolution.
