Peterborough developers will be forced to provide more local school places under council plans

Current guidance is for developers to provide school places per 100 homes for: 20-30 primary school children, 15-20 secondary school pupils and four pre-school children.

It is now being proposed to increase that to: 35-45 places for primary school pupils, 23-33 places for secondary school pupils and 20-30 places for pre-school children.

The proposed new ‘multipliers’ follow a review of recent large-scale developments in Peterborough including at Cardea in Stanground and in the Hamptons, where both are seeing thousands of new homes being built.

A shortage of school places has been a regular issue across Peterborough due to it being one of the fastest growing cities in the UK.

The problem has been particularly acute in Hampton with primary schools seeing waiting lists for places.

The current multipliers had not been reviewed since 1998 when Peterborough became a unitary authority, breaking away from Cambridgeshire County Council.

For the past 22 years the city council has used the same multipliers as Cambridgeshire to calculate school place provision, but will now review this every three years.

Increasing the number of school places the council believes will be needed at new developments will form the basis of negotiations with developers when current and future planning applications are submitted.

A council report said using multipliers “lends weight to the council’s case whenever it is challenged by developers”.

It added that the new multipliers will be used to aid with the timing for when three new primary schools and a secondary school at Great Haddon, close to the A1M, will open.

The recent review concluded that there are significantly more primary and secondary school aged children living in social housing in Peterborough than in non-social housing.

The council’s Conservative-run Cabinet is expected to approve the new multipliers at its virtual meeting on Monday.