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Contract for St
Hilda's school set to be awarded
A £15 million contract for
the construction of a new home for St Hilda's Church of England High
School in Sefton Park is set to be awarded by the Mayor's Cabinet.
Under the proposal being discussed on Friday, 20 December 2013, Morgan Sindall will build a new
4 storey building on land, at Sefton
Grange, on Croxteth Drive, adjacent to the existing site.
The present school building will then be demolished and used for
games pitches, a sports hall and a car park.
It will be the 6th scheme to be delivered under the Liverpool
Schools Investment Programme, in which Mayor Joe Anderson has
pledged to build 12 new schools in a £169 million investment.
Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson
said:- "This is great news for pupils at St Hilda's and is
part of our commitment to making sure our children are taught in
fantastic surroundings. This proposal will see a much
needed new building for current and future pupils and also the
development of improved sports facilities. Work on the
investment programme is moving forward apace and I am pleased that
we are delivering on one of my key pledges."
It is forecast that 85% of the sub-contracts will be awarded to
firms in the City region; 68% in Liverpool; meaning local labour
and apprentices will be used to build the school.
As part of the scheme, the school will also become co-educational
when the new building opens on the site in September 2015. The
sports facilities will be completed by February 2016.
Headteacher Eleanor Benson said:-
"St Hilda's is looking forward to this once in a generation
opportunity for a completely new school. Staff and students have
achieved magnificent results, but our premises are outdated.
We are closely involved in the design of all aspects of the school
and excited about getting facilities tailor-made for St Hilda's."
Subject to planning consent, construction work is expected to start
in April 2014. |
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The nation's
hearing; has it all gone a bit Pete Tong?
TO round off a year of the
Medical Research Council's Centenary celebrations, researchers from the MRC
and the National Institute of Health Research are today launching a
unique mass participation study to see if listening to loud music is
contributing to the increase in hearing loss in the UK population.
The scientists will be looking at how our listening past affects our
hearing present.
The latest figures published in the International Journal of
Audiology estimate that around 1 in 6 adults in the UK have at
least some hearing loss; enough to cause difficulties in
communicating, especially when listening in social situations with
background sounds, such as other people talking. This is an increase
of around 12% over the last 2 decades, and given the ageing
population, is likely to rise further.
The World Health Organization has stated that the single biggest
cause of preventable hearing loss is loud noise. Hearing damage
caused by workplace noise will have been reduced by the decrease in
heavy industry, the legal restrictions on noise and the provision of
protective equipment such as ear defenders. But what effect has loud
music had on the population's hearing?
Over almost exactly the same period of time as the Medical Research
Council has existed, we have had the ability to play music at levels
capable of causing damage through the advent of amplification. Might
almost a century of amplified music have something to do with it the
prevalence of hearing difficulties, or is hearing loss just 'part
of growing old'?
The online experiment is aimed at everyone: younger or older in age,
better or worse in hearing and with a wide variety of musical
experiences and hearing abilities. The researchers are asking as
many people as possible to go online and tell them about their
listening habits and complete a very quick assessment of their
hearing for speech in a background of noise. If a lifetime of loud
music does lead to hearing loss, the scientists expect to see a
correlation between the participants' reported previous listening
habits and current hearing abilities.
Dr Michael Akeroyd, from the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, is
leading the project. He said:- "Many studies of music-related
hearing loss have focused on musicians who may be exposed to loud
music almost every day. But far less is known about the cumulative
effects of loud-music listening on the hearing of the general
public. The primary purpose of this project is to determine if there
is such a link.
Amplified music has been around for about as long as the Medical
Research Council. Back in 1913, when the MRC came into being, music
was played on horn gramophones and the first electronic amplifier,
the valve, was only about 5 years old. But in the last 100 years or
so, there has been revolution after revolution in music
amplification and we can now play music for hours at levels that
could be potentially damaging. A lot of MP3 players or headphones
will be bought for Christmas presents, and there's the temptation to
turn the music up loud. We want to find out if prolonged exposure to
loud music really does cause hearing problems."
The UK's largest hearing loss charity, Action on Hearing Loss
(formerly RNID), has long campaigned on the dangers of loud music,
and the importance of protecting and, in turn, prolonging your
hearing. Chief Executive, Paul Breckell, said:- "Damage to
your hearing is irreversible; and, contrary to popular opinion,
hearing loss is not a condition that only older people need to
concern themselves with. With many nightclubs and concerts measuring
20 or 30 decibels above the safe noise level, more and more young
people are likely to start feeling the effects of their
music-loving, gig-going habits. Hearing loss not only rules out our
enjoyment of music, but has the potential to lead to unemployment,
isolation and has even been linked to dementia. The MRC's public
experiment is such a vital piece of work to offer a robust
understanding of and insight into how people stave off early loss of
their hearing."
Please use the following link to the hearing survey, which will be
live from 00.01hrs on Wednesday -
online.
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