HM Young Offender Institute Polmont first opened as a Borstal in 1911. Blairlodge Academy opened in 1843 by Robert Cunningham, a Church of Scotland minister, who also played a significant part in the Free Church breakawayin Polmont in the same year. The new school was for boy boarders and flourished under an innovative and dynamic headmaster J Cooke-Gray who took over in 1874. Modelled on the English public school system it attracted the sons of some of Scotland’s wealthiest families, and inevitably, cricket and rugby were the principal sporting activities of the three hundred pupils. But there was an admirable practical strain to the curriculum and an emphasis on science which was unusual for the period. At the turn of the century Blairlodge was the largest school of its kind in Scotland. After the death of Cooke-Gray in 1902 the school experienced financial difficulties and when it was forced to close in 1908 by an outbreak of an infectious disease, possibly measles, it never reopened.The buildings were purchased by the Prison Commissioners in 1911 and shortly afterwards opened as Scotland’s first Borstal. It is now, of course, Polmont Young Offenders Institution.

​Working closely with all parties, Complete Ventilation Solutions Ltd provided design assistance resulting in the supply of 42 cassette units to the visitor area providing a heating and cooling solution whilst maintaining the client’s requirements of controllability and security. All units were fitted with a control package allowing banks of units to be controlled from a single master wall mounted console, which in turn is addressable from the BMS software.

OTHER CASES

Network Rail

West Cumberland Hospital

Abbey Hill School