The unit on Fenton, and how to get to the right door

KRSS ACADEMY LTD coaches from one floor: Unit 2 Govan Road, Fenton Industrial Estate, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2RS. It is a working industrial estate, not a leisure centre, and the difference matters on arrival — the units either side take deliveries, the road has no pavement for part of its length, and the door you want is not the big one.

The plan from the road

The hall runs the full depth of the unit. The office and the store take the right-hand end, with the office window looking back into the cool-down corner. In front of the hall is the parking strip; the road is beyond it.

The two doors

The roller door is the wide one in the middle of the frontage. It is for kit deliveries and for airing the hall on a warm evening. It is not the way in for a group, and a child should never be walked through a roller door that is open onto a parking strip.

The pedestrian door is to the right of the roller door, set back, with the unit number on it. Everything happens there: sign-in, the collection queue, and the hand-over at the end of a session. A coach is on that door for the whole arrival window and for the whole collection window, and the door is held rather than propped, so it closes behind each child.

Parking and arriving

The parking strip: Marked bays in front of the unit, used by whoever is on the floor that evening. At drop-off and collection times the bays nearest the pedestrian door are kept clear so that the queue is not standing between parked cars.
Turning: Govan Road is a loop within the estate; there is room to turn at the far end rather than reversing past the doors. Nobody reverses across the parking strip while a collection queue is out.
On foot: There is pavement for part of the road and none for the rest. Children walking in are asked to come down the side with the kerb and to cross once, at the top of the strip, where the sightline along the estate road is longest.
Deliveries next door: Units 1 and 3 take lorries during the working day. Weekday sessions start after the estate has gone quiet, which is the main reason the groups run in the evening rather than straight after school.

The floor itself

Sealed concrete, taped out in bays — twelve across and eight deep — so that zones can be named out loud rather than measured. The tape is checked on a Friday and re-laid when it starts lifting at the corners, which on this surface it does.

Fixed in place: the bench against the back wall, the ball rack by the store door, and the whiteboard beside the office door where the session's teaching point is written. Everything else is carried out of the store and back into it: goals, mats, cones, ladders, bibs. A group that arrives early will usually find the floor still being set out, and children wait on the bench rather than in the zone being laid.

The hall is unheated and it is warm in summer and cold in February. The practical consequence is on for parents: a spare top in the bag from October, and two bottles rather than one from June.