The headteacher of a Sunderland school for autistic pupils has said a huge thank you to volunteers from car battery giant AESC who have transformed the grounds over the summer holidays.

Fifteen volunteers from the AESC gigafactory in Sunderland are spending three weeks at Thornhill Park School creating a decking area and planters for a new school café, and painting 350m of railings around the school grounds.

Nadine Horton, principal of the North East Autism Society school, said: "The volunteers have been amazing – providing such a valuable service which I know is going to be hugely appreciated by our whole school."

AESC, which manufactures batteries for Nissan's electric vehicles, has sent out teams of volunteers to various sites around Sunderland in the past months including schools, Fulwell Mill and the Grace House charity.

Stephen Wood, a production supervisor at the factory and the project lead, said: "It's really enjoyable to work on something that makes a bit of a difference, and that you can look at afterwards and think, 'we did that'.

We're gutted that the Thornhill Park pupils are on holiday so we can't get to meet them, but hopefully we can come back and see them use the new areas and enjoy them.

The school is planning to open a new café to parents and pupils in the new academic year, serving tea, coffee, cakes and sandwiches prepared by the pupils.

Nadine said: "We were lucky enough to be introduced to some of the staff from AESC through one of our admin staff who was aware of the services they had been providing throughout the local community. They came into school to discuss potential projects that they could support with.

"By the end of the meeting the team had agreed to strip back and paint the perimeter fence for us which is a huge undertaking. We also discussed our new café project which will be launching in September and that we wanted to develop a decking area for café customers. AESC agreed to build our decking and they have also created some beautiful planters to edge the decking area."

Michael Rogan, senior production manager at AESC, said he was proud of the staff who he described as the company's "greatest asset".

"Most live in local postcodes and grew up in these areas so it's wonderful to be able to contribute like this," he said.