CARDIFF, Wales: A residential school for children with severe autism has been given the go-ahead in Cardiff.

Former Royal Mail offices at Coryton – Coryton House – will be turned into the year-round centre by Orbis Education & Care.

Coryton House, with extensive landscaped ground, has been unoccupied and largely neglected in recent years. Orbis plan fully to renovate the building and the grounds, with some being handed over to Cardiff Council for the provision of parkland.

Andy Martin, director of Orbis Education and Care, said: “Coryton House is our second venture into providing the highest possible standards of education and care for children with severe autism, who would otherwise have to go outside Wales for suitable placements.

“It follows the opening of Ty Orbis in Brecon in February 2007, which was the first of its kind in South- and Mid-Wales. Ty Coryton, as it will be known, builds on that success, and is a much bigger project as a specialist school for 50 residential and day pupils.

“We are extremely pleased to have secured this unique building and will now fast-track its re-development to open at the earliest opportunity.”

Gary Carver, associate director of DTZ, who acted for the vendor’s Taylor Woodrow, who bought the building from Royal Mail, said, “Coryton House is an ideal building for Orbis Education and Care and for the needs of children with autism and their families. It is in a reasonably secluded location yet close to the M4.”
 
(Source: Western Mail, August 8, 2007)