We’re honoured to have been shortlisted for our work in Barnet last year on a special educational needs and disabilities school in the category of Community Engagement Campaign of the Year, by the PR Moment awards.
The client run a school in north London for children with special educational needs and disabilities and have needed to move to a new school for several years. The school wants their pupils to live in a world where they have the same opportunities as their mainstream peers. The client was dismayed to discover that their plans to give an extra 72 school places to children in need was facing refusal by council officers. Despite the new school site being the last option for their expansion, officers thought that the needs of the children should be outweighed by the harm proposed to the Grade 2 listed building currently on the site.
Thorncliffe were brought on, at a very late stage, to coordinate and harness the overwhelming community support for the new school, and demonstrated this with a packed out, polite, public gallery at the committee meeting.
A majority of councillors agreed were convinced by the community’s emotive arguments to overturn the officers’ recommendation, which meant the application was approved and our client gained the vital planning consent they needed to build the new school.