Belper Civic Forum

 The feasibility study on the future of the school building concluded that a mixed community and commercial use, as advocated by the Belper Civic Forum, was likely to be the best option from a financial point of view. It suggested that the scheme would be self financing provided the former car park was developed for housing. The Belper Civic Forum has responded to the associated consultation and our response can be viewed here.Response.The Forum met the County and Borough Councils on June 19th, in order to discuss its proposals and the way forward.

In order to provide more information about the Forum’s Herbert Strutt Project a special web page has been created. The future of the former school is proving to be a very hot topic in the town, over 1800 people have signed our petition to ask for it to be used for community purposes, in less than a month! In addition there is also a petition on the Prime Minister’s web site so that other people, such as former pupils, can make their opinions known. Go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Strutts-Belper/

The children and teachers finally left the old Herbert Strutt school building this morning. The story was covered by BBC East Midlands TV, including interviews with Belper Civic Forum about the future use of the site.  The Strutt School sub-group of the Forum decided this week to use the name “Strutts” for its project for the re-use of the building for mixed community and commercial use. A special web page is being prepared including an on-line petition. In the meantime volunteers will be out getting signatures in Belper on Saturdays March 1st and 8th. A further press release has been prepared that gives a lot more background to the issues.Press release 27th Feb o8

The Aleena Naylor show at 1000 today featured an interview with members of the BCF Strutt School Group about the future of the building. Statements were also provided by Derbyshire County Council and Amber Valley Borough Council.

The open day held at Herbert Strutt School in Belper on Saturday 8th September seems to have been quite a success with at least 90 people coming to have a look round. Belper Today gave it some good coverage and plenty of comments on the potential future of the school have been gathered.

I had a wander around and found it a really amazing building - certainly early 20th century civic architecture on a great and impressive scale! I also took a few pictures - the best of which I’ve uploaded to Flickr , but here are one or two to be going on with :