Blaenavon Community Campus
What is it?
The Blaenavon Community Campus is a £15 million integrated development that will provide a wide range of community services for the residents of Blaenavon and the surrounding North Torfaen and Heads of the Valley area. It will have a strong community focus and will deliver best value for money by improving integration between key public bodies.
The Campus is being delivered by Torfaen County Borough Council and Torfaen Local Health Board who are committed to providing modern, high quality and flexible services. The campus therefore represents a unique opportunity for a number of public bodies to work collaboratively to develop services that are modern, effective and efficient. The public bodies involved will share costs for planning, design, commissioning, building and the final delivery of those services. This is not co-location, but true service integration to deliver shared objectives.
It will provide:
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A new 130-place nursery and 450-place all through primary community focussed school with group rooms, external play areas and adult learning capacity to help improve the employability of local people;
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The school will be physically linked to community leisure facilities that will include a 2-court sports hall, dance studio, fitness suite and external multi-use games area;
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The school and leisure facilities will be aesthetically linked and therefore complemented by a Primary Care Resource Centre including a new doctors surgery, pharmacy, dentistry, physiotherapy, chiropody, therapeutic, wellbeing and prevention services (such as dietetics, sexual health, weight management, drug/alcohol abuse), child health and peri-natal clinics, long term conditions management, screening services and space for patient groups to meet;
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At the heart of these buildings will be a wide range of community services such as a Council customer care point providing council tax advice and information, cash receipting, access to the police and community safety, a range of advocacy services such as tax advice, and credit union advice. These shared spaces will contain meeting and interview rooms for health and wellbeing promotion and general community group use. The Communities Next team will use the facility for events and promotions;
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Sure Start and Flying Start programmes will be designed in from the very beginning and will be situated on the school site.
Moreover, the Campus will directly lead to other much needed development such as specialist housing for older and dependant people on an extra-care/retirement village basis and affordable housing for families and young people. It is already leading to investment through re-location of the local football team (in collaboration with the team), who are being supported to pursue their aspiration of creating a football centre of excellence.
The attached block diagrams| give an idea of what the campus may look like. These drawings are very indicative at this stage and are subject to change as the project, consultation and development progresses, and they will be updated when further detail and therefore new block drawings become available.