Forest Bridge School's 24-place sixth form stalled when its builder went under. Councillors decide on Tuesday whether to add £700,000 and finish the building.
Councillors decide on Tuesday 22 September whether to put another £700,000 into the half-built sixth form at Forest Bridge School in Maidenhead. If they do not, the council’s own report says the project has to be cancelled, the steel frame already standing on the site has to come down, and about £1.36m spent so far is written off.
The scheme is a 24-place sixth form for 16 to 19 year olds with autism. It stalled in March when the main contractor went into administration.
What the sixth form is for
Forest Bridge School is a special free school on Braywick Road, Braywick Park, Maidenhead, for children and young people with a primary diagnosis of autism. The Department for Education’s register records it as taking pupils from 4 to 19, with 133 on roll.
The sixth form would provide 24 places for young people aged 16 to 19 with Education, Health and Care Plans for autistic spectrum condition. At the moment, the report says, Forest Bridge pupils who want to stay in education at the end of Year 11 have to transfer to a mainstream school sixth form, a college or an independent provider, which may be inside the borough or outside it.
The sixth form did open. It is in temporary buildings
This is the part the headlines miss. The new building was meant to open in September 2026, and the council leased temporary accommodation, installed on site in August 2026, so that the sixth form could open on time anyway. It stays there until the permanent building is finished. The cost came out of the existing budget.
So the question on Tuesday is not whether the sixth form exists. It is whether the permanent building gets finished, and what happens to the young people in the temporary one if it does not.
What went wrong
The main contractor, Evolution 5, was appointed and started on site in summer 2025. In March 2026 it went into administration and stopped work. By then the groundworks were complete and the steel frame for the building had been erected.
The report notes that regular credit checks on the company by the council’s contract administrators, Clarkson Alliance, had not shown any financial distress before that point.
The council’s property and procurement teams reviewed the part-built scheme and decided to appoint a replacement through a Pre-Construction Services Agreement before signing a fixed-price contract. Momentum Build (NW) Ltd was appointed in August 2026 as preferred contractor for that phase and has started design work.
The money
- September 2024: Council agreed a budget of £2,331,136, made up of £1,921,306 from the borough’s High Needs Provision Capital Allocation and £409,830 from the Special Provision Capital Fund.
- April 2025: a further £600,000 was approved after the pre-tender estimate came in higher than expected, taking the total to £2,931,136.
- Now: the total project cost is expected to be £3,600,000, an increase of £668,864 on the approved budget, including roughly £200,000 of contingency.
The council had spent £1,054,125 by the end of 2025/26 and a further £192,727 in 2026/27, mostly on the temporary accommodation, making the site safe and the new contract. That leaves £1,684,283 against a forecast completion cost of £2,353,147, hence the £668,864 gap.
The report attributes the increase to the contractor’s insolvency, project delays, re-procurement, the temporary accommodation, extra risk provisions and the work needed to restart safely, with construction and material prices rising as well.
Because the £700,000 would be moved from one budget to another and the sum is over £500,000, only Full Council can approve it.
What happens if councillors say no
The report is blunt about the alternative. “If the virement is not approved the project will need to be cancelled. There is no way to deliver the remainder of the scheme within the existing budget.”
- The existing steel frame would have to be removed and the site made safe, at roughly £100,000.
- Total spent at that point would be about £1,362,862.52.
- Those capital costs could become a revenue cost if the Department for Education decided the spending on a cancelled project did not meet the grant conditions and asked for the grant back. The report says there is no provision in the council’s revenue budget for that, so it would have to increase its borrowing.
- Forest Bridge could no longer run a sixth form. Because it is an academy, it would have to run a statutory process to close the sixth form for September 2027.
That last point is the one for families. The temporary classrooms are already in use.
What it costs elsewhere
The £700,000 comes from the unallocated High Needs Provision Capital Allocation, which currently stands at £2,338,740. Taking the money out reduces what is available for the borough’s forthcoming SEND and Alternative Provision capital strategy, which goes to Cabinet later this year and is expected to focus on new Inclusion Bases and early intervention.
The report argues the impact is manageable: about £1.6m of unallocated funding would remain, with further allocations expected in 2027/28 and 2028/29, plus £2.7m of SEND and Alternative Provision grant and another £2.7m to be allocated in 2027/28.
Will the council get anything back?
It has tried. The Royal Borough has submitted a claim to the administrators of Evolution 5 for £541,768.00, a figure calculated by Clarkson Alliance to reflect the additional costs attributable to the contractor.
The report’s own assessment is discouraging: “It is not, however, thought likely that the council will get any significant compensation as a result.”
When it would be finished
If Council approves the money on Tuesday, the contract award can proceed, construction restarts in October 2026, and the building is due to be ready for occupation at the start of the 2027/28 school year. The report’s delivery target is 31 August 2027.
That is a year later than the original plan.
What it means for you
- If your child is at Forest Bridge, the sixth form is running now in temporary buildings on the site, and this decision is about the permanent replacement, not about whether the sixth form opens.
- If you want to watch the decision, it goes to Full Council at 7pm on Tuesday 22 September. The agenda and the full report are published on the council’s website.
- The vote is on a budget transfer, not new money. It moves £700,000 from unallocated high needs capital funding into this scheme.
- The report was written by the Executive Director of Children’s Services and Education, Lin Ferguson, for the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Education and Windsor, Councillor Amy Tisi.
- We will report what Council decides.
Sources
- Request for additional capital budget for the Forest Bridge School sixth form scheme, report to the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council, 22 September 2026, for the budget history, the contractor’s administration, the cancellation consequences, the compensation claim and the timetable.
- Council agenda, Tuesday 22 September 2026, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
- Get Information about Schools: Forest Bridge School, URN 142066, Department for Education, for the address, age range, status and pupils on roll.
This report is taken from the council’s published committee papers, which set out the officers’ recommendation. Councillors had not voted when this was published. We will update the page after the meeting.
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