kennysarmy Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 How many of you that work at secondary schools have or do not have an on site living premise for your caretaker / site manager?
Katy Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 We do (but it is a house rather than a bungalow ), nice 3 bed house with 2 reception rooms. Semi-detached as it's stuck to the side of the school, and one of the bedrooms is directly above the site manager's workshop. We don't provide any services - used to provide a work phone and internet connectivity but when we joined a trust and got our internet through an MPLS link to their core it became impossible to manage, so we told him to just go get a line installed and get BT Infinity. (We used to just give him a router which sat on our public IP block VLAN with one of the spare IPs, the way the network was set up when we were on MPLS was we had no external IPs. Now we've a normal connection we could go back to providing a connection but as he's already got his own sorted, not worth the hassle)
elsiegee40 Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 We used to have one, but the site manager retired, the bungalow was condemned and demolished, the new site manager lived offsite and the bungalow will not be rebuilt.
3s-gtech Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 We had a house, nice place - well built, good size, but in the wrong place and was left empty for years. Not even the concrete base remains
DrBeaker Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 One school they had a bungalow but was empty for ages and was apparently going to be sold off or used for storage. One school had a house onsite but was used for offices and estates team and a meeting room. One now has nothing onsite.
3s-gtech Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 I think many dated back to when school sites were more open and unsecured, and the boilers needed to be lit and stoked up at 6am. Eventually, most seemed to stay empty as no-one was prepared to live on site - even at a vastly reduced rate. I wouldn’t.
MrLudwig Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 We still have a bungalow on site for our Site Manager. No LAN connection but it is just within WiFi range. He has his own Virgin connection however. He does have an alarm panel linked to the rest of the school so he can monitor and arm/disarm the alarms. We did have a plan to run in a LAN connection to enable access to CCTV. In the event of the alarms being triggered, he could view the CCTV first rather than just going in to investigate. The thinking being this would reduce potential risk to him in the event of a break in.
Katy Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 I think many dated back to when school sites were more open and unsecured, and the boilers needed to be lit and stoked up at 6am. Eventually, most seemed to stay empty as no-one was prepared to live on site - even at a vastly reduced rate. I wouldn’t. We've still got an open site (no fences or gates, we're just surrounded by sand banks). Our current site manager moved in about 20 years ago, not sure what is going to happen when he retires in a year or two - might just end up empty and mothballed, depends on whether the new site manager wants to (or if their contract says they have to) live on site. It's a nice house with a private front garden, sheds, garage etc but the problem with living on site is when you do retire - you're homeless, and you have no property to sell, good luck getting a mortgage age 65. (I think ours said he managed to get a 14 year mortgage and had some savings)
Ditto Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 We had an odd one. We took over a closed primary school site for tempory-ish senior school. There was a house for previous caretaker just inside the secure gates, but the resident had nothing to do with us - raised some safe-guarding challenges!
elsiegee40 Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 We've still got an open site (no fences or gates, we're just surrounded by sand banks). Our current site manager moved in about 20 years ago, not sure what is going to happen when he retires in a year or two - might just end up empty and mothballed, depends on whether the new site manager wants to (or if their contract says they have to) live on site. It's a nice house with a private front garden, sheds, garage etc but the problem with living on site is when you do retire - you're homeless, and you have no property to sell, good luck getting a mortgage age 65. (I think ours said he managed to get a 14 year mortgage and had some savings) Slightly off topic: If you live in tied-housing you can purchase a property and let it out without being subject to Capital Gains Tax. My sister and her husband lived in property tied to their employment with the National Trust. They already owned and had a mortgage on a flat in London and retained it. They rented it out and even after income tax the rent paid the mortgage, insurance, etc. When they needed to buy their own property, they sold the flat (no CGT) and bought a new property in Derbyshire with only a few years left to run on the mortgage. Sorry, thread drift but relevant
6Foot2 Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 (edited) We have an 'on-site' Site Manager's house ('On-site' because there are two houses. One is actually on-site. This is given over to offices, teaching and meeting rooms. The other house, next door and off-site, is the Site Manager's accommodation) He pays a nominal rent. Not sure what that actually is, but probably something like £20 per month, a very good rate for the area. Edit: The previous Site Manager's house, which was fully on site and used to stand where the front staff car park is now, fell into a sink-hole while the (then) caretaker and his family were away for the weekend. Edited February 7, 2019 by 6Foot2 Add detail.
AJWhite1970 Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 We have an on-site two bedroom flat that used to be the previous site managers accommodation but when he retired 8 years ago the new site manager already lived 5 mins up the road so didn’t take up the flat option. Since then the flat is used for our university work placement PE students who live onsite and manage the sports hall for evening and weekend events.
clareq Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 At my last school the caretakers house was converted into a hair salon, where we taught C&G Hairdressing. At my current school it is now the Alternative Provision area - we teach horticulture there.
hardtailstar Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 My last school the old caretakers house (within school grounds) was turned into offices. Current school there is a bungalow right next to the school gate on the outside. We have a farm on site and that house is for a farm worker, who happens to be married to the head caretaker!
dcwhitworth Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 We've got a very small bungalow on site. It used to be for the head caretaker who is by the longest serving member of staff. He's had a few health problems ion recent years and is no longer head caretaker although he still works here, but he still lives in the house. I'm not sure exactly what will happen in the future but I expect when he retires they'll let him and his wife continue to live there if they want to. Honestly doubt anyone else would want to live there as it's so tiny.
kennysarmy Posted February 7, 2019 Author Posted February 7, 2019 We're in negotiations with the County as whether our new school will have one or not!
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now