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New school plan is ‘financial madness’
‘Vanity project’ for Crouch Hill splits community
A LAST ditch attempt to stop the “madness” of moving a popular primary school to the site of a local park in a leafy corner of Upper Holloway will be made by residents.
The plans for new premises for Ashmount Primary School, currently based in Hornsey Lane, are set to be rubber stamped at a planning committee meeting next month. The new school building will be constructed in Crouch Hill recreational ground at a cost of £6million.
The Ashmount Site Action Group say the plan is costly, unpopular and could herald the arrival of tall buildings in Hornsey Lane, close to the tranquil Whitehall Park conservation area.
Group member Fiona Merchant called the move a “vanity project” and said a feasibility study by architects Purcell Miller Tritton last year found the school’s current premises – a draughty, glass-clad 1960s building designed by Festival of Britain architect HT Cadbury-Brown – could be renovated for as little as 3.5million.
She said there was a possibility that tall buildings might be erected in the area if the current site is sold to developers.
Ms Merchant said: “I can understand the school wants to move because they hate the building, but we think that if the building were refurbished to a high standard, pupils and staff there would like it.
“It seems madness financially to spend so much when at the end of the day the school will have a smaller playground and as a community we lose all that green space.”
In a council consultation most parents, the school governors and the Parents and Teachers Association, co-chaired by TV comedian Arabella Weir, voted to rebuild Ashmount on the Crouch Hill site. David Barry, chairman of governors at the school, said residents’ arguments over cost were “not comparing like with like”.
He said: “The plans for the Crouch Hill site do not just involve building the new school but also renovating the Bowlers Nursery and the Cape Youth Project and restoring to public use a derelict park.
“The opposition has come from a small group of residents whose gardens back on to the site and who believe – wrongly – that their interests will be served by the school staying where it is.”
Council leader Terry Stacy said the school’s current premises were too hot in summer and too cold in winter.
He said the new school premises would be the first zero carbon public building in the borough and would be built on the footprint of derelict buildings.
Because the Crouch Hill recreational ground is protected as a Metropolitan Open Space, the plan must also get the go ahead from the Mayor of London. The North Area Planning Sub-Committee will decide whether or not to give planning consent for the new premises at a meeting at the Town Hall on September 8.
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