Paddock SEND School in London won ‘Project of the Year – Inclusive Design’ at the Education Estates Awards last night.

Delivered for Wandsworth Borough Council, and procured through the SCAPE framework, the project provides a purpose-built secondary and sixth-form learning environment for pupils with complex SEND requirements.

Designed with accessibility, inclusivity and wellbeing at its core, the school creates fully accessible spaces that support every learner to thrive.

Congratulations to our customers, partners and project team including Arcadis. It was fantastic to celebrate this achievement together at the Education Estates Awards last night. ?

Discover what makes Paddock SEND School an award-winning project, here: https://www.willmottdixon.co.uk/projects/paddock-send-school

Paddock exterior with signage.jpg

Also, a big well done to Wandsworth Borough Council on also being named Client of the Year along with Richmond Council.

Our SEND education expertise

Designed around the pupil
Willmott Dixon builds special schools around the young people who will use them. For us, inclusive design is the starting point of a SEND school, not a compliance exercise. We work with headteachers, parents and carers from the start, so that every building meets both physical and neurodiverse needs. Some pupils need calm, low-stimulation spaces, while others benefit from strong visual cues, and the building has to work for both. We take the same care during construction, helping pupils prepare for a building site next door and offering work experience to older students.

Paddock School: an exemplar for SEND
Paddock serves pupils with moderate to severe learning difficulties, autism and complex needs. It shows what our approach achieves. We converted a three-storey Victorian school and added a modern extension, raising capacity from 128 to 192 places. The design gives pupils:

  • a community café at the entrance, where pupils grow, prepare and sell food
  • classroom gardens, a sensory trail and a forest garden.

The new building achieved BREEAM Outstanding.

A growing national track record
Our SEND work spans England:

  • Hopescourt School in Walton-on-Thames, a £23m net zero carbon school for 200 autistic pupils, for Surrey County Council
  • Tiffield Academy in Northamptonshire, a £21m school for 230 pupils, for West Northamptonshire Council
  • Silverwood School, a £29m net zero campus in Wiltshire
  • The Promise School in Okehampton, for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs, for Devon County Council
  • Acre Wood Academy in Crowborough, under construction for East Sussex County Council
  • a series of schools through Lincolnshire County Council’s SEND programme.

Shared knowledge, local delivery
Our Building for All white paper brought together what councils, architects and our own SEND project teams have learned about creating successful special schools. Each new scheme benefits from that knowledge, and each is delivered by a local team through frameworks including SCAPE, SCF and the DfE Construction Framework.