Health and safety enforcers are looking into a collapse of scaffolding during roof repairs at a Cheltenham school.

A large section of scaffold came down in windy weather at Cheltenham Bournside School last Monday. No children were in the central area of the school when the equipment came down at the Warden Hill Road site.

But work was immediately put on hold amid concern that the incident could have had a tragic outcome. In a statement, the coeducational secondary school, which dates back to 1907 and is rated 'Good' in all areas by Ofsted, said it had asked the scaffolding contractor to leave the site.

A statement said: "Last Monday's incident was immediately reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) by the school and the additional necessary notifications to the HSE are now in progress. Cheltenham Bournside School have also commissioned an independent scaffolding designer to review the design to determine exactly why the scaffolding did not perform correctly in the strong winds.

"Affected areas of the school were evacuated and when it became clear that overall site safety was compromised, students were kept in safe areas before being sent home. All scaffolding was made safe on Tuesday and completely removed by the end of Wednesday and the original team (who are a licensed, specialist, scaffolding contractor) has been removed from the contract by the principal contractor.

"The roof repair work in the central area of the school is now on pause whilst the principal contractor appoints a new scaffolding contractor. Any replacement design, which is likely to be built during the Easter holidays, will be independently inspected by an additional third party scaffolding designer, before anyone is allowed to re-enter the area."

An academy school, Bournside caters for 1,750 students and is currently Gloucestershire's largest school.

HSE and local authorities are jointly responsible for enforcing health and safety legislation. Together they ensure that dutyholders manage the health and safety of their workforce and those affected by their work.