Radcliffe's Outstanding special school has opened a £13m wing with seven classrooms and sensory rooms, four years on and after its first builder collapsed.

Millwood Primary Special School in Radcliffe has opened a new £13 million wing. The school can now teach more than 200 children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), Bury Council said on Friday.

The wing was officially opened by Councillor Sandra Walmsley, the council’s Cabinet member for children and young people.

It took nearly four years from the plan to the ribbon. The original builders went into administration part-way through, leaving half the school’s roofs unfinished.

What the new wing has

The council says the project delivered:

  • seven new classrooms
  • a multi-use hall
  • sensory rooms and a rebound room
  • outdoor play spaces
  • more car parking
  • repairs to the roof and the existing building

It was paid for with capital money from the Department for Education, which funds councils to provide school places for children with SEND.

The school

Millwood is on School Street, Radcliffe, and takes children aged 2 to 11. Ofsted rates it Outstanding. Its most recent inspection was in July 2023.

When the expansion was first announced in December 2022, the council described Millwood as a school for pupils with “very complex medical needs”, severe learning difficulties, autism, epilepsy, and sensory impairments. It had 161 pupils on roll then, after a small extension in 2019, and the council said the new wing would add places for an extra 50.

The government’s schools register now records 192 pupils against a capacity of 190, figures that predate the new wing.

Why it took four years

Cabinet papers set out a bumpy road:

  • December 2022: the expansion goes to Cabinet, while the school’s roof is already being replaced.
  • September 2024: the original contractors go into administration. They had re-roofed only “approximately half of the school roofs”, and responsibility for the rest passed to the council.
  • April 2025: Cabinet picks a new builder through the North West Construction Hub framework.
  • July 2025: Cabinet approves the new contractor’s costed bid. Work starts on 4 August on a 57-week contract, due to finish on 7 September 2026.

That timetable is set out in the July 2025 Cabinet report. The report says the roof was “deteriorating and needs to be replaced as soon as practically possible”. The contract costs were kept in an exempt Part B.

Why the council built it

The expansion is part of the council’s “Project Safety Valve” agreement with the Department for Education, a deal to bring down its overspend on high needs.

The July 2025 report says the aim is to “reduce the reliance on placements in Independent Non-Maintained Special Schools”. It warned that without the extension, pupils would be sent “to out of borough provisions which would be at a large cost to the council”.

The pressure has not gone away. A draft report to the borough’s Schools’ Forum on Tuesday forecasts the high needs budget, which pays for SEND places, will overspend by £12.22 million this year: £58.15 million spent against a budget of £45.93 million. It says demand keeps rising “as the number of children and young people with EHCPs continues to grow”.

What it means for you

  • Places at Millwood are not applied for directly. Special school places in Bury are allocated through a child’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). Talk to your child’s SEND caseworker if you think Millwood would suit them.
  • More local places should mean shorter journeys. The council’s stated aim is to meet more children’s needs “closer to home within a Bury school”, rather than in schools outside the borough.
  • The school’s own website is millwoodprimaryschool.co.uk.

The council is also planning a new alternative provision school in Radcliffe: see our report on the Ash Grove plans.