Peterborough company secures £30m contract to build schools

Elliott, which has its head office in Manor Drive where it employs 100 people, will be responsible for the construction of 10 schools across southern England.

Lee Jon Newman, chief executive of the company, which has 1,000 staff nationally, said: “I am extremely proud and pleased to have been awarded this highly prestigious Government contract to provide new schools using our modern methods of off-site construction.

“This contract strengthens our presence and credibility in government programmes.”

Elliott specialises in relocatable accommodation from portable cabins, modular buildings and permanent buildings to portable toilets and temporary fencing.

Newman said the firm’s specialist building methods would cut the time traditionally taken to construct each school.

He added: “This will allow each of the schools to take a much earlier occupation of their new building than if they were using traditional methods of construction.”

Elliott, which has more than 50 years’ experience of providing permanent and temporary buildings, will be the main contractor in the Priority School Building Programme modular primary schools procurement scheme. It is a government venture to meet the needs of those schools in most urgent need of repair.

The contract has been awarded by the Education Funding Agency, part of the Department for Education.

As part of the scheme, Elliott will be responsible for building a new school on each of the existing sites using a modular construction solution.

The company was created in 1963 as Elliott’s of Peterborough and it manufactured and sold mobile classrooms at a small factory in Peterborough.