Dunottar School expansion approved

By Chris Caulfield, Local Democracy Reporter, 15 Dec 2025

A private school that charges more than £25,000 a year will use its ballroom as a temporary classroom while new expansion work takes place.

Dunottar School is based in a Grade II listed building within a historic garden in High Trees Road, Reigate.

It will now be allowed to increase in size from 460 pupils to 600,  after being granted permission to change its travel plans that had capped the number of pupils attending.

The school says the expansion, which some residents had opposed due to the high levels of expected traffic during school-run times, will allow it to offer more subjects to its sixth formers as well as provide a wider range of sports.

The school’s rooms will be reshaped to accommodate an extra class entering the school in Year 7 for the next five years. 

The school’s ballroom will be used as a temporary classroom while work is carried out, the December planning committee (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) of Reigate and Banstead Borough Council heard.

Officers told the meeting: “The proposal seeks to vary the travel plan from the previous permission because the increased pupil numbers would inevitably create more trips to and from the school especially at drop off and pick up times.”

The plans feature increased on-site staff parking which would remove cars from the surrounding roads and mitigate some of the increase in traffic. 

Drop off and pick up traffic will be directed up Ringley Park Avenue and back down, while a traffic monitor would be provided by the school.

There will also be changes on the roads including proposed yellow lines and formalised crossing areas.

The school will also install spaces for e-bikes. Surrey County Council was happy with the proposals, which limited councillors’ ability to reject on planning grounds.

Mark Tottman, headteacher at Dunottar, said the school had nearly shut down but has since built up a waiting list.

He said: “We are more than a school, we are a community.” He said the added places would give sixth formers “extra subject choices, consistent sporting fixtures, better preparation for the future and more. Scope to be leaders and role models.

“Without this modest expansion, disappointed local children  may travel out of Reigate for their education, leading to increased commuting time and more car journeys.”

He said there have been 150 letters of support and that  past concerns over traffic and parking had been due to previous inaction –  but that has since changed.

Speaking against the plan was Julian Golding.  He said Dunottar School was seeking to force upon the residents of Oak Way restrictions on the use of their road without any consultation at all, and in flagrant disregard to correct procedure.

He said: “Oak Way is demonstrably against the proposals as the school would understand if it had bothered with any consultations and considered alternatives to the yellow lines.”

Geoffrey Travis told the meeting “refusing the plan could save a child’s life because daily there are lives at risk.

“Children with headphones and smartphones dodge cars and buses, stressed parents drive, distracted by children, a disaster recipe.”

Reigate.uk is regulated by Impress, the independent monitor of the press. Details of our corrections and complaints procedure is here (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre).