The county scrapped the 600-place Newtown Road school and has 45 of the 90 places needed by 2029. City councillors voted on 15 September to demand one west of the Severn.
City councillors were asked on Tuesday 15 September to write to Worcestershire County Council demanding a new secondary school west of the River Severn. The county dropped its plan for a new Worcester secondary school eleven months ago, and has since found 45 of the 90 extra places it says the city will need by 2029.
Motion 2 on the agenda for the meeting of 15 September was proposed by Councillor Lamb. It says families on the west side are being “bused to schools farther away, in areas such as Malvern”. It directs the Managing Director to write to the county’s Chief Executive, “seeking immediate action towards establishing a new high school for Worcester west of the River Severn”. (Notice of Motion, Council, 15 September 2026, Worcester City Council)
The county council is the education authority here, not the city. Its own published record backs up much of what the motion says, and rules out the obvious answer to it.
The school that was cancelled
The county agreed in February 2021 to build a new 600-place secondary school in Worcester. It picked a site at Newtown Road, next to Worcestershire Royal Hospital, appointed Oasis Community Learning as the academy trust and won planning permission on 18 March 2025. The budget went from £44m to £50m to £60.411m, and the opening date slipped from 2026 to 2028 to 2029.
On 23 October 2025 Cabinet killed it. The resolution “agreed to stop further work on the Newtown Road new secondary school project” and recommended that the county remove the money from its capital programme, cutting planned borrowing by £33.6m. (Worcester City Secondary Education Sufficiency and Place Planning, Cabinet minutes, 23 October 2025, Worcestershire County Council)
The cost by then was £63.3m. The minutes record the Cabinet Member being asked whether a new school could be built in time, and answering that “the school could be built in time, but they had no intention of building it”. The council was in a financial emergency, with borrowing debt of £607m at the end of March 2025 and £33.6m of exceptional financial support from Government for its 2025/26 revenue budget.
A County Hall site option was costed at £43.1m and ruled out. County Hall is now being sold.
What replaced it
A report to county Cabinet on 5 February 2026 sets out the plan that took its place. (Education Sufficiency Annual Update, Cabinet, 5 February 2026, Worcestershire County Council, on the meeting agenda)
Sufficiency from 2029 to 2035 is to come from two expansions and then from spare seats elsewhere:
- Bishop Perowne CofE College, a permanent expansion of one form of entry, 30 places a year group, from September 2029, at about £4.1m
- Tudor Grange Academy Worcester, 15 more places a year group by 2029, at about £750,000
- then surplus places at other schools, the report names Dyson Perrins CofE Academy in Malvern and Pershore High School
That is 45 of the 90 places the county forecasts are needed for September 2029. A further half or full form of entry is still being investigated at Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College.
The budget line in the capital programme was renamed. It is no longer “Worcester City Secondary School” but “Worcester City Secondary sufficiency schemes”. The report also notes that a request may be made to the Department for Education to withdraw the new school from the free school presumption process. Oasis Community Learning has agreed to that and has confirmed it will not seek costs.
The county’s own web page for the project has not caught up. It still says the school is to be “delivered for September 2028” and describes the planning application as live. (New Worcester Secondary School, Worcestershire County Council)
Where the shortage actually is
The February 2026 report forecasts the need for extra Year 7 places in the city as 90 for September 2026, 45 for September 2027, none for 2028 and 90 again for September 2029. On applications received at the time it recorded a shortfall of 38 Year 7 places for this September.
It has not been possible to keep any surplus of places in Worcester city secondary schools for several years. Where a child cannot be placed within a reasonable distance they go to the Fair Access Protocol panel. The report gives the count for Worcester city secondary places as 21 children in 2022/23, 32 in 2023/24, 18 in 2024/25 and 9 in 2025/26 to the date of the report.
On the motion’s central claim, the county’s evidence points two ways.
It supports the complaint about travel. To cover September 2026 and September 2027, Cabinet decided in July 2025 to create the places in Malvern instead, at Dyson Perrins CofE Academy and The Chase, at a cost of about £1.3m. Home to school transport for 120 pupils over the six years those year groups are at school was put at £600,000 to £720,000. (Update on Worcester City Secondary Education Sufficiency and Place Planning, Cabinet, 17 July 2025, Worcestershire County Council)
And when the February 2026 report names the fallback school for the Christopher Whitehead catchment, it is Dyson Perrins in Malvern, 6.7 miles away.
But the county puts the sharpest shortage elsewhere. “The area we see the greatest number of families not receiving one of their three preferences is within the south of Worcester and this is expected to continue,” the report says. That is the Nunnery Wood and Blessed Edward Oldcorne catchments. The problem has been worst in Warndon Villages, and for 2025 it also reached pockets of the Nunnery Wood and Christopher Whitehead catchments.
The west side has one secondary school, and it cannot grow
Christopher Whitehead Language College sits on Bromwich Road in St John’s, on the west bank. The motion’s premise is that it is the only secondary school on that side of the river. The county’s reports read the same way. They repeatedly describe it as “the closest Worcester City Secondary School” when measuring distances to Martley, Upton and Malvern.
The county has already tested whether it could take more pupils, and concluded that it cannot.
The feasibility study “concluded that there is insufficient external space to expand this school further on its site”, and the report adds that the trust board agrees. Investigations into whether an alternative site could take some provision are at an early stage, and no site has been found.
So the motion is asking for the one thing the county has not looked at: a second school on that side of the river. Every option the county has costed is either an expansion of an existing school east of the Severn, or a seat in Malvern or Pershore.
The motion also cites “data from the Worcestershire Education Partnership” showing pupil numbers west of the Severn rising 10 per cent over five years. We could not find that figure in the county’s published place planning reports. Those reports forecast the number of children already living in the city and attending its primary schools to fall over the next seven years. The growth they expect comes from new housing instead. The West Worcester Urban Expansion is approved for more than 2,300 homes up to 2039, and our Worcester planning news page follows the applications as they come forward.
What it means for you
If your child is due to start secondary school in September 2027, this is not an abstract argument. Applications opened on 1 September and close on 31 October 2026. Applications made on time are dealt with before late ones. (Applications for September 2027 school places open on 1 September 2026, Worcestershire County Council)
Two things follow from the county’s own reports:
- Use all three preferences. The council’s stated advice is to include your catchment school as one of them, because that is what protects you if you miss your other choices.
- If you are offered a place outside the city, check whether you qualify for home to school transport before you appeal. The county has budgeted for exactly this happening.
The meeting was held at 7pm on 15 September at the Guildhall on the High Street. The motion was carried, on the council’s own video recording of the meeting. Minutes are only published once the following meeting approves them, so the written record will not appear until November. Also on that agenda was a vote on who decides Worcester’s planning applications from 31 October. (Agenda for Council, 15 September 2026, Worcester City Council)
A motion is a request, not a decision. Even if councillors pass it, the choice belongs to the county, which has spent the last year removing a new Worcester school from its budget rather than adding one.
Updated 18 September 2026: this article was first published on 14 September, before the meeting. It has been brought up to date now the meeting has taken place. The result is taken from the council’s own video recording, linked from the agenda page above, because the minutes will not be published until the next Council meeting approves them.
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