Danecourt's planned 250-place secondary for pupils with special needs is now estimated at over £30m. Councillors added £5m on 15 October.

The planned secondary school for pupils with special needs at Danecourt in Gillingham is now estimated to cost more than £30 million. That is almost double the £16.21 million the council agreed to borrow for it last year.

Full council put another £5 million into the project on 15 October, from this year’s government grant for special needs buildings. The council’s record of the meeting shows it approved every recommendation in the annual review of school places.

The figures come from that review, the report to full council written by the council’s education officers.

Why Danecourt matters

Danecourt School, on Hotel Road, is a special school rated Good by Ofsted. The council agreed in 2025 to build a new secondary provision for it, giving around 250 places for pupils with an education, health and care plan (EHCP).

The report gives the reason in plain numbers:

  • 420 Medway pupils with EHCPs are placed in independent schools, in and outside Medway, at a cost of £21.8 million a year
  • 343 more secondary pupils are expected to have an EHCP within five years, and 411 more primary pupils
  • Danecourt’s expansion would avoid around £12 million a year in costs once it is full
  • moving a pupil from out of area to a local place saves about £3,185 a year in transport, £10,038 against £6,853, or about £796,250 a year across the new places

Without the extra places, the report says, most of the additional pupils “will need to be placed in expensive out-of-area and independent provision, with costly and distant home-to-school transport”.

Why the bill has grown

The council’s plan was for future government grants to cut the amount it had to borrow. Instead, “due to escalating construction costs”, the estimate at the pre-design feasibility stage is now over £30 million.

The new £5 million does not reduce the borrowing. The report says it “will avoid borrowing above the amount agreed”. The Cabinet also moved £612,713 left over from relocating Rivermead School to the Stoke site into the Danecourt project on 25 August.

The costs are not final, because the project is still at the design stage. The council expects more grant in coming years and says it will use it to cover extra costs or borrow less.

Borrowing the full £16.21 million over 50 years would cost an estimated £911,355 a year, or £45.6 million in total, according to the report. Cutting the loan to £10 million would bring that down to £562,218 a year.

Where this year’s £5.72m goes

The Department for Education gave Medway £5,721,975 in high needs capital for 2026/27. Councillors approved this split:

Bar chart of Medway's £5.72m high needs capital grant for 2026/27: Danecourt secondary £5,000,000; All Saints Primary specialist resourced provision £400,000; St Margaret's Infants £220,000; Napier Primary £60,000; St Margaret's Junior £40,000.
Chart by Medway Live. Source: Medway Council report to full council, 15 October 2026.
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A specialist resourced provision, or SRP, is a small unit inside a mainstream school for pupils with an EHCP. The extra money for All Saints follows a change of scope “due to the restricted nature of the site”. The Napier and St Margaret’s Junior top-ups follow detailed design, rising costs and site restrictions. St Margaret’s Infants is a new project, to sit alongside the unit at the junior school.

Riverside Primary in Rainham will grow

New housing in north Rainham means Riverside Primary School will expand in phases. It starts with a specialist unit and, “as demand dictates and funding allows”, grows to three forms of entry.

Councillors approved £1,621,988.52 of developer contributions for the first phase. Most of it comes from two Rainham housing schemes:

Development Contribution
Land at Otterham Quay Lane, Rainham £1,154,739.53
Land West of Station Road, Rainham £365,481.92
Kingdom Hall, Bloors Lane, Rainham £34,266.18
Land at Featherby Road and Beechings Way, Gillingham £36,000.00
Land at Lennoxwood, Twydall £31,500.89

The report says the whole expansion “will cost significantly more” than this, and more money will be sought for phase two.

The other decisions

  • The Howard School, Rainham: up to £150,000 of developer money towards a 3G sports pitch, built with a Football Foundation grant and contributions from the Howard Academy Trust. The report says it could be used by the community outside school hours.
  • Greenvale Primary, Gillingham: £5,811.33 for furniture, as the former infant school takes its first Year 6 class this term.
  • The Beeches free school: £42,500 for play equipment and an outreach cabin on the Rowans site.

What else the review says

The report also sets out changes families will want to know about:

  • Greenacre School and Walderslade School would merge into a single co-educational school called The Capstone School from September 2027, under a proposal from the Beyond Schools Trust. Its Year 7 intake would be 340, against 360 now.
  • Hoo St Werburgh Primary will grow by 210 places from September 2028, using space freed when the Marlborough Centre moves to Twydall Primary.
  • Strood Academy is getting an extra classroom block, still at the feasibility stage.
  • Some Gillingham, Strood, Chatham and Rochester primaries may cut their Reception intake because of falling applications, while older year groups in Gillingham fill up.
  • Out-of-area children took 16.5% of grammar school offers in 2026, down from 20.3% and the lowest in five years.

The Local Plan’s 25,000 homes will need much more. The report puts new primary schools and expansions at £94 million to £114 million, and new secondary schools at £170 million to £195 million. A new secondary in the Capstone Valley, on council land at Abbots Court Farm, faces a funding gap of around £20 million to £25 million.

What it means for you

If your child has an EHCP and is placed outside Medway, Danecourt’s secondary is the project most likely to bring a local place. It is still at the design stage, and the report gives no opening date.

If you live in Rainham’s new estates, Riverside Primary is where extra places will come first. Parents at Greenacre and Walderslade should look out for the Beyond Schools Trust’s own consultation on the merger.

The Medway Test is changing too: from 2027 the pass rate rises to 26% of Medway pupils. Our Medway Test 2026 story explains what that means. For the housing behind all of this, see our report on the Medway Local Plan.

Sources