More than £3 million has been awarded to a school to help it get new science and technology classrooms, after council leaders gave it the go-ahead.

Haybrook College could build the expansion using grant money passed on by Slough Borough Council.

Council leader Dexter Smith said the project ‘will provide essential, additional spaces’ and ‘will include six additional general teaching areas, a science room, a design and technology room’.

Haybrook Academy, in Haymill, caters to children with social, emotional and mental health needs. Now Slough Borough Council leaders want to expand it so that it can accommodate a rising number of children with special educational needs.

READ MORE: Promised new classrooms not built yet – despite council leader’s claim

The council says it expects that the number of children needing specialist education in the borough could increase by 450 over the next five years. If the council can’t find places for them in Slough, it will have to send them to school outside the borough.

Sue Butcher, the council’s executive director for children’s services, said Haybrook College had already gone ‘above and beyond’ in providing places for children with special educational needs.

Previous plans to extend Haybrook College were raised in 2017, but were never implemented. Now the council says it can extend school using grant money from the Government’s department for education.

Councillor Gurcharan Manku said the new plan ‘shows our commitment to the residents, particularly to the most vulnerable residents and the young people of our town’.

He added: “This is very good news and it should be a headline in the Observer.”