TWO multi-million pound state-of-the-art buildings have been officially handed over to Bishop Fox's School, Taunton.

The £7million Somerset County Council project includes a teaching block with 12 classrooms and four IT suites, as well as a theatre and activity studio.

Despite the challenges presented by the coronavirus crisis, staff at contractor BAM worked to ensure the teaching block was completed in time for the start of the school year last month.

Cllr Faye Purbrick, County Hall's cabinet member for education and transformation, said: "I’m delighted to hand over these two new state-of-the art facilities to the school community, benefitting children and young people now and for future generations.

"Taunton is growing, and we’ve invested heavily to ensure local schools can meet an increasing population.

"These new buildings ensure Bishop Fox’s School capacity can increase from 985 pupils to 1,200.

"We’d really like to thank everyone involved, and particularly the school and the contractor BAM for pulling out all the stops to ensure the teaching block was ready for students returning in September."

Acting headteacher Nic Blunsum said: "We are delighted by the addition to our already excellent resources of these two new buildings.

"These resources will be hugely beneficial to our students, particularly the theatre and activity studio, which will provide a great platform for our students to develop and demonstrate their expressive arts skills.

"The addition of these resources will continue to allow Bishop Fox's to expand and grow as a school and we would like to thank BAM, Futures for Somerset and the local authority for their support and partnership in this project."

BAM construction manager Rob Shipp said: "We’re delighted to work again with Futures for Somerset, one of many projects we’ve worked on collaboratively over the last ten years.

"We were extremely pleased to work with Bishop Fox’s School to meet their needs and are very proud to have completed this project on time with zero defects.

"We would like to thank all our consultants and suppliers for their support – a big effort from everyone."