Llanelli’s children with the most complex learning needs are getting a bigger school. Cabinet gave the go-ahead on Monday for a new 150-place Ysgol Heol Goffa on land next to Ysgol Pen Rhos.
The school has 133 pupils in a building meant for 118 and has been over capacity for five years running, Carmarthenshire County Council says. The new one is due to open in September 2029.
That is 32 places more than the current building was designed for, and 17 more than the children already in it. The gap is why parents and pupils are asking whether the new school is already too small.
Cllr Glynog Davies, the cabinet member for education, said the decision “will enable more pupils in the Llanelli area with SLD and PMLD to receive specialist education”. The school will expand places for pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties, with demand for autism places in the town met separately, the council says.
Families get one more say. The council publishes the statutory notice on Tuesday 17 November and objections have 28 days to come in, to 15 December.
The 46 responses to the summer consultation do not carry over, so anyone who wants their view weighed has to write in again. The notice will set out how.
Is 150 enough?
Fifteen senior pupils put the size question to the council in July, and all four of the people who objected did so because 150 was too few, not because they were against the school.
The council says 150 is “appropriate and deliverable”, that demand for special school places is “inherently difficult” to predict, and that a 250-place school taking in autism provision was ruled out “due to budget constraints”.
Estyn is on the council’s side. The inspectorate says the plan “is likely to strengthen specialist ALN provision in Carmarthenshire” and should cut the number of children sent out of county, having found last November that the school had been full “for several years” and that classrooms were too small for wheelchair users.
The money and the site
The £35m bill is not yet signed off. The council wants the Welsh Government to pay 75%, the top rate for special schools, and both shares depend on a business case that has still to be approved.
The new building would go up on council-owned land next to Ysgol Pen Rhos, with pupils using the hydrotherapy pool at the neighbouring Pentre Awel development rather than one of their own. The old site comes back to the council once the children have moved, it says.
This is the second attempt. The council binned a 120-place scheme in May 2024 on cost, thousands signed a petition, and a bigger school on a cheaper design came back a year later, with the consultation opening in June.
What happens after 15 December
Objections go to cabinet first and then to full council, which has the final say. The consultation document pencilled that vote in for March 2027, with planning permission to follow.
A new building does not settle the other fight at Heol Goffa. Town councillor Shaun Greaney said last month that four pupils had died in six months and renewed the five-year call for a nurse on site; the council said no link should be drawn to nursing “without clear clinical evidence”, and Hywel Dda University Health Board says its community nursing team and staff training cover the school.
If full council agrees, Cllr Davies said, the council “can move forward with the school’s future”. For the families who have fought for this school since the first scheme was scrapped, the next date to watch is 17 November.
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