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School’s move will benefit nursery and youth project
• EVEN if the current Ashmount School buildings could be refurbished to a “proper standard” – which they can’t, as a visit to the school or a look at Islington’s reports makes evident – Francis Wilkinson is not comparing like with like in suggesting this as a more economical option (Why move school when a refit could save millions? September 18).
The cost of the Crouch Hill proposals reflects the fact that Ashmount’s new building is one part of a much broader scheme. This will include new facilities for Bowlers Nursery and Cape Youth Project (both of which already operate at Crouch Hill in similarly unsatisfactory accommodation), as well as making this neglected and under-used green space accessible to the whole community.
Bringing together these three important services for children and young people within a unique natural environment that is thereby brought back into community use would be a huge achievement and a great benefit to residents across a wide area. It would be a travesty if a handful of Gresley Road residents (concerned, as Peter Berresford Ellis makes clear, with their own backyards) made any headway in obscuring that fact.
Helen Castor
N4
• FrancIs Wilkinson, writing on behalf of Ashmount Site Action Group (ASAG), says “we would like to work closely with the school”. As all attempts by Ashmount to start a dialogue with ASAG have been rebuffed so far, this represents a welcome change in policy.
Accordingly, as chair of governors at Ashmount I invite the ASAG steering group to meet governors and the PTA of Ashmount. Perhaps he could contact the school office to indicate the availability of his group.
David Barry
Chair of Governors, Ashmount
• PETER Berresford Ellis states that the “environmental issues are legion”. They are indeed but I do not think he understands what they are. He is in good company. The Labour councillors who voted to defer a decision admitted that they did not understand the environmental impact of building on Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) and the chair admitted he had not read all the papers.
Islington Council has commissioned two independent site surveys to its own exacting standards. The surveys’ findings were before everyone at the planning meeting. The school heard earlier this year that the surveys were extensive enough to satisfy the Greater London Authority. The plan for redeveloping the Crouch Hill site does not involve increasing the footprint of the derelict buildings which are already there. So, the redevelopment will not encroach on MOL at all. It will, on the contrary, enhance and increase public use of the green space.
The plans for the new school and nursery building are ecologically exemplary in their forward-looking, zero carbon approach, whereas the current school is totally energy inefficient. It is completely fitting that a development for children in such a green area should be concerned with the sustainability of the environment. The council publicly declares its pride in being one of the first 10 boroughs nationally to sign up to a 10 per cent carbon reduction in 2010.
We all hope the planning committee will eventually see sense, become brave enough to act in line with the council’s declarations and approve the Crouch Hill plans.
Dean James-Robbins
Shaftesbury Road, N19
• AMID all the furore over the future of Ashmount School, little mention has been made of the fate of Crouch Hill Recreation Centre. Winner of a national Unison award for grassroots community projects in 2002, it was precipitately closed and boarded up by Islington Council just two years later when funding for renovations, including essential electrical work on the site, was almost secured.
No options for its alternative use have been proposed by the powers-that-be. Indeed, its closure has facilitated the classic gentrifiers’ ploy of breaking up popular use of an area and then applying the self-fulfilling prophesy of “dereliction” in order to justify new developments.
Parents, governors and teachers of Ashmount constitute only a small minority and sectional interest of the population covering the area from Archway to Crouch Hill. Remarkably, no consultation documents were delivered to residents of Warltersville Road (which borders on the recreation centre), and I only got hold of a copy after a neighbour was sent one as a member of Friends of Elthorne Park.
The facts, such as they present themselves to this resident, are of a bypassing of the views of the people of Hornsey Rise and a smash-and-grab raid on a popular community facility that can never be replaced by the options on offer.
Frank Jacobs
Warltersville Road, N19
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