Oxford Combined Courts

Home > Sectors > Charities > Oxford Combined Courts

Client

ISG

Project cost

£1m

Location

Oxford

Project Description

Remodelling redundant office space at Court Building into two new Hearing Rooms

BTP has been chosen to work with national contractor ISG, a member of the Ministry of Justice Strategic Alliance Framework on the Court Reform Programme, to rationalise parts of the MOJ estate across the Midlands and Home Counties.

At Oxford Combined Courts, BTP was tasked with remodelling recently vacated offices, maximising the use of space by remodelling it into two additional hearing rooms.

The project was completed in a tight timescale of just 16 weeks, with all the works undertaken outside normal working hours to avoid disruption to the Court Service.

Key Features

As the contractor’s architect and lead designer, BTP and the rest of the team faced several challenges.

As there was limited access to the building before work started there was little opportunity to fully investigate the structure before internal demolition and opening up started on site, and limited available archive information on the building resulted in a few surprises once the works started on site, including a car servicing mechanic’s pit from a former use of the site.

BTP was required to make the best use of the space available within the existing building, to achieve the functional and spatial requirements of a modern hearing room. We needed to ensure that the required lines of sight within the hearing rooms were not compromised by the structural columns.