Minister for Works and Engineering Alex Scott last night gave an assurance that movements among the department's key architects would not affect Government's new secondary school site. Chief architect Richard James is to leave the Ministry in August after 30 years with the Civil Service to take up a post in the private sector.

And Kyril Burrows, who has been project architect for the second senior school project, has been promoted to building manager within a different area of the Ministry.

He will now be a section head, as opposed to an officer. Mr. Scott said: "Mr. Burrows is still working in Works and Engineering, but he has been promoted.

"Because of his intimate knowledge of the second senior school, he has agreed to remain available to the division if we need consultation on any given point. However, the role of the architect, as an architect, is all but over. The architect as a supervisor and agent of the site will go on. We have several architects who are capable of stepping into the breach and providing advice and expertise if we need it."

Mr. Scott said the Ministry's construction manager for the site, David Butterfield, was really in a more prominent role than the architect at the moment, checking on quality assurance for Government.