The northern half of what was New Road School (one of the two first Board schools built in Portsmouth in the 1870s) was demolished a few years ago and replaced by a social services building. The southern half which includes and retains the street frontage with its attractive little tower is the subject of an imaginative scheme designed by Mick Morris who some years ago did our award-winning scheme for converting the Royal Marines church in Henderson Road into houses by vertical slicing.

The New Road scheme similarly slices the school building into ten houses, all different, each using the height of the old schoolrooms to accommodate bedrooms in the roof space and each with its own patio, has been subject to a long delay. Now a new developer has taken it on; but ran into difficulties over car parking. The local residents supported by their councillors fear the new residents' cars will clog up the neighbouring streets.

Mr Morris has now modified his design providing extra spaces partly by lifting up his two new-build houses masking the dull backs of the shops on Kingston Road to incorporate car ports on the ground level. The Development Control Committee at their meeting on 8 January 2003 unanimously approved the application.

RJ