By Howard Potter, MBCG Core Group
Never mind the planning side of things and the costs. It’s very popular to promote more choice when it comes to schools. And when it becomes an over-riding policy particularly when central government deals with a compliant local authority, planning and costs take a back seat. In Richmond alone we have seen new academy/free schools being encouraged with tax-payer backing in the most unbelievable places – for example the original “Turing” proposal for the National Physical Laboratory site by Bushy Park – without the land-owner’s consent and then a primary school proposed on the London House site by the notoriously dangerous Manor Circus on the A 316. This is not to mention the Thomson House site hard by the dangerous Sheen Lane level crossing and now of course the proposed large academy school on the Stag brewery site.
See the MBCG analysis of Richmond Council’s forecasting of the need for additional secondary school places.
With the Stag proposal, we now know just how harmful such a school would be in terms of worsening traffic and road safety conditions, removing the area’s much-valued playing field and how this school would serve to render the two existing local secondary schools’ hard won sixth forms unviable. The negative impacts of the school on the site on traffic and safety are serious enough. Over half the total increase in vehicle traffic in the worst morning rush hour is due to the school. The increase in morning rush hour pedestrian and cycling traffic across the level crossing is forecast to be 71% and 82% respectively and yet there are no effective plans to improve safety here.
The costs for all this school development are lost in the blurring of the current school funding practice but we know the National Audit Office has had long-standing concerns over the value for money of the free school and academy initiatives.
The community don’t want this secondary school on the site and neither do our local head teachers and even, it seems, the developer. Far better to go b