THE town’s first academy has been handed a £7-million funding boost to help transform its campus.

The Sutton Academy, which switched from the local education authority controlled Sutton High, has been allocated the funding by the Government’s Education Secretary Michael Gove.

The funding represents a significant boost to education in St Helens, which lost out on tens of millions of pounds when Gove pulled the plug on the Building Schools for the Future project last autumn.

The academy, which specialises in science and is sponsored by St Helens College and Edge Hill University, has yet to make public its plans for how the money will be spent.

In a statement, principal David Terry described news that a building programme would ahead as “tremendous”.

He said: “With multi million pound funding in place the academy will be making plans this term to develop the Sutton campus and its facilities for learning.

“Discussions and consultations with a wide range of community partners, academy staff and students will be taking place over the next couple of months to ensure that improvements are made that we can all be proud of.”