|
|
 |
| |
Why move school when a refit could save millions?
• HEADMISTRESS of Ashmount School, Pana Magee, is reported as being angry with Islington Council’s north area planning committee for deferring a decision on a planning application to rebuild the school on one of the two remaining Metropolitan Open Land sites left in Islington (Planners stall on plea for school rebuilding, September 11). The planning committee wanted to seek additional information.
Her anger, and that of the supporters of the application, was also directed at residents campaigning for the school to be refurbished to bring it up to standard rather than its removal from the area.
“What additional information do they need?” Ms Magee is quoted as asking. What they and the community need is accurate information.
Having followed Ashmount Site Action Group’s (ASAG) slow, “teeth-drawing” attempts to extract the relevant information and documents from the council’s current regime over the last year, I have, as a local resident of 30 years, read these documents now in the public domain.
They have demonstrated a mind-boggling amount of incorrect information about the sites and misinterpretation of opinions. It was obvious that any attempt to push through this planning application in its current state was, at best, incompetence or, at worst, a blatant political ploy on behalf of the current council regime.
Even some of the facts given to the Tribune by supporters of the scheme after the planning decision last week are inaccurate. A new build on a site which should, according to the London Plan, be classed as a conservation site, would cost a minimum £16.5million (not £6m). Refurbishing the existing school, which is actually on a larger, more spacious site than the proposed new build, would cost £3.35million to bring it up to standard. This refurbishment, suggested by the council’s own architect’s survey (Purcell Miller Tritton, October, 2007), is what most local residents who agree with ASAG support.
It would keep the school in our community and provide an essential facility for the children of this area for future generations rather than remove it to a new site many feel will be inaccessible. The environmental issues are also legion. And what would happen to the Ashmount prime land site if it becomes available for sale? Councillor Greg Foxsmith has dismissed supporters of ASAG as “just a minority of local Nimbys” – from the phrase “Not in my backyard”. Perhaps Cllr Foxsmith has foreknowledge of what the council intended should happen to our backyard.
Peter Berresford Ellis
Address supplied
• ASHMOUNT is a successful school in urgent need of better buildings. We believe, on the basis of a great deal of evidence accumulated in reports made by and for Islington Children’s Services, that there is no doubt the school will have a better educational environment by being refurbished or redeveloped where it is than by moving to a much smaller site at Crouch Hill, a site the Metropolitan Police think is unsafe and unsuitable for a school.
A major objection to the move to Crouch Hill is that it would involve development on one of only two stretches of Metropolitan Open Land in Islington (the other one is Highbury Fields). So it can only be allowed if the Mayor of London approves it, and that requires very special circumstances – there must be no feasible alternative site.
But, of course, there is – the consultants’ reports commissioned by Islington Council say the school can be brought up to a proper standard by refurbishment (or, of course, rebuilding) where it is now. And refurbishment would be at a fraction of the cost, even when the money received for the sale of the school’s current site is taken into account.
In fact, there is no decent reason for the move, though we have tried very hard to find one. Whatever the school wants to do can be done better on its present site, which also has the scope to provide a community resource in the form of a nursery, a youth centre and related activities.
We hope those responsible for the school will now recognise that in all respects the best solution is for it to remain where it is, and put forward plans for that to happen.
Our group recognises that school governors and teachers have for years been led to believe that the school is to move to Crouch Hill, and they have become committed to that as the only option for a better school. They may feel the future of the school will be harmed if those plans for a move are not accepted.
We sincerely believe that not only the open land but the quality of education offered by the school would be harmed by a move to Crouch Hill, and we would like to work closely with the school so it can be improved where it is and become unquestionably the best in the area.
Francis Wilkinson
Ashmount Site Action Group
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
