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Proposal for new infant nursery unit at Laxdale             7/2/13

Plans to construct a new-build children’s nursery at Laxdale School have taken a step forward.

The Comhairle’s education committee has ditched plans to install a portacabin for the Gaelic croilegan.

Instead, it will undertake a feasibility study to price the building of a two storey extension or a standalone new build by the school.

A portacabin, valued at nearly £170,000, presently sited at Back School, was earmarked to be shifted to Laxdale for the nursery.  

But Cllr Roddie Mackay told the education committee a permanent new-build would be far more value for money than a portacabin “dumped on us from Back.”

Committee chairperson Catriona Stewart told him sternly: “It is not a portacabin - it is a very high specification modular unit. They are not portacabins.”

Mr Mackay insisted that the price of the portacabin was nearly close to the cost of a proper building of the same size.

He pointed out the council’s rhetoric when closing schools was to plough the savings into “improving the remaining school estate.”

Following Mr Mackay’s intervention, the committee agreed to drop the portable unit idea and draw up a study for a permanent nursery building as well as putting an effective traffic management plan in place.

Laxdale Croileagan currently meets at the Cearns and would relocate to the school campus after a new nursery building is provided.