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Islington Tribune - by PETER GRUNER
Published: 9 November 2007

Parents and children outside Hugh Myddelton School

‘We’ll take kids out of school if their playground
is sold off’

Parents’ anger as plan to sell land to make way for lucrative flats gets go-ahead

FURIOUS parents have threatened to take their children out of a primary school after it won planning permission to build a nine-storey block of flats on its playground.
Angry mothers who wait to pick up their children outside Hugh Myddelton Primary school in Clerkenwell are fuming at the news that their children stand to lose nearly 400 square feet of play space to make way for a complex of shops and 32 flats.
They have hit back at claims made by the school’s chairman of governors David Hankins last week at a meeting of the South Area planning committee that the issue had “galvanised” the school, uniting parents and teachers alike in support of the sell-off to fund much-needed repairs.
But the incensed group of parents, huddled outside the school gates with copies of the Tribune, which broke the news last week, begged to differ.
Mother-of-two Margaret Lough said: “If they build those flats I’m taking my kids out of the school. There’s not enough space as it is. Now they are taking half their playground away. The infants are not allowed to play in the older children’s playground.
“They are also taking the caretaker’s house away. You don’t know who’s going to be in those flats. At first they said it was going to be three storeys, now it’s nine storeys.”
Her comments echoed similar threats made privately by other parents who are also thinking about withdrawing their children.
Nora Nolan, who has two children aged four and eight at the school, said: “We all thought it was going to be about three floors high, but now we find out it’s going to be nine floors. With 35 flats there’s a lot of people going to be overlooking the children.”
Emma Howard, who lives opposite the school, said: “Would they be happy if someone came and took half their garden away? For some of the children, this is the only garden they have.
“My children don’t have a garden to play in at home. We live on the second floor.”
Ms Howard and fellow parents are also worried about what the development might bring so close to the school. The parents are concerned that people from the flats will be living too close to the play area, sparking safety concerns.
Jeanette Simpson, whose nine-year-old son will be leaving the school next year, said: “This is a brilliant school, it’s just the building we object to. I’m fighting against something that my child won’t be at the school to see. I object to school playgrounds being sold off.”

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