POOLE Grammar School has been awarded £3.8 million from a Government grant for a brand new sports facility.

The Dorset school, on Gravel Hill, will use the grant to support the construction of a new sports hall to replace its life-expired 1960s gyms and facilities. This project is due to be completed in spring 2023 based on the current programme which assumes a summer 2021 start.

The sports hall will have facilities to support a wide range of sports and activities available for community use out of school hours.

These include basketball, volleyball, badminton, indoor football, indoor hockey, table tennis, martial arts, netball, trampolining, handball, yoga, pilates, and Zumba.

The facilities will also include a fitness suite, indoor cricket nets, and a dedicated accessible climbing wall chamber.

Headteacher Dr Amanda Smith said: “We are delighted to have been successful in this application, and excited by the prospect of being able to offer state of the art sporting facilities for our students, as well as being able to welcome people from the wider community to benefit from such a high-quality development.

“From school sports lessons, to community activities, to extracurricular enrichment opportunities, to the promotion of physical health for all, we see such opportunity for this versatile and exciting facility and we can’t wait to be able to get started.”

The grant comes from government Condition Improvement Funding (CIF), an annual round of bidding under which academy schools and colleges can apply for funding for the upkeep and improvement of their buildings.

In the latest round, nearly 4,000 CIF applications were made and from these 1,466 projects were approved with a total value of £483 million.

One project includes the £2.8 million grant awarded to Ringwood School in Hampshire, which will see thermal upgrades and re-roofing work on its science and technology buildings.