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School refit ruled out
• MEG Howarth (Slash and burn policy, October 23) calls for an end to a tax system which encourages demolition and rebuilding rather refurbishment (VAT is charged on a refurb, it is not charged on a rebuild). This is certainly worthy of support, but she also speculates that the tax position influenced the Crouch Hill project. This is not so.
The Crouch Hill project involves both rebuild and refurbishment. There are three buildings on site at present. The old community centre, which is derelict, a nursery building 25 years old, which was, as usual then, not built to last and which is wearing out, and the Cape building.
The decision as to whether or not to rebuild or refurb on the Crouch Hill site has been made on a case-to-case basis. Thus, the Cape building is to be refurbished and will provide a proper base for a youth project, an ecology centre and some community facilities, possibly including a community café. It will also include the combined heat and power (CHP) plant for the site, running on woodchips. So Crouch Hill will be using locally generated electricity (no losses in transmission) and using heat that would otherwise be wasted.
On the other hand, the derelict community centre will be demolished with the nursery and replaced by a new building using low-carbon-emission building processes and materials. The new building will house Ashmount School and Bowler’s Nursery and provide community facilities outside school hours. It will occupy the same area so no recreational land will be lost.
So the building will be intensively used, will use as little energy as possible, and that renewable. In contrast, Ashmount School in Hornsey Lane is the most expensive to heat school building for its size in London. It is not suitable for community uses. Likewise, the decision to solve the problems caused by the building in Hornsey Lane wearing out by moving the school was only taken after an extensive exploration of all other possibilities. The first possibility looked at was, of course, refurbishment. All refurbishment could achieve was preventing the building from becoming structurally unsound. It did not produce a good educational setting nor would it be suitable for community use.
This arises from the way in which it was built. In its time it was both exceptionally innovative, built on the cheap and designed to meet a precise brief. It was built when energy was low cost and it was widely believed that nuclear generation would soon make electricity “too cheap to meter”, so the huge heat loss in winter caused by making the entire surface of the building out of glass was not an issue. There was not experience with the use of all-glass construction so the problems with overheating in summer were not appreciated.
The glass curtain wall was built using prefabricated units, an untested method of construction at the time, now largely abandoned (The firm that made the glass panels went bankrupt in due course). It was not understood that, due to the difference in thermal properties of the glass and the frames, over time the glass would work loose, requiring each individual panel to be renewed.
The brief the architect had was for separate infant and junior schools, each of three-form entry. Ashmount is now a single “all-through” primary school and two-form entry. There was no thought of the school having additional, community functions. There was no ICT and so on.
So refurbishment could not work. The brief for the new building is that it be as flexible as possible, for who can say what exactly will be needed in 50 years time?
Demolishing and rebuilding the school would have met huge opposition due to its architectural significance as an exemplar of a particular style of modernist architecture. No one who has read the Tribune recently can doubt this. Or followed the controversy over Finsbury Health Centre.
Hence the proposal to move the school as part of the Crouch Hill project. A proposal put out to public consultation which obtained the agreement of two thirds of residents, and has now been granted planning permission.
David Barry
Chair of governors, Ashmount School
• I’D like to make it clear that my letter regarding VAT payment – which encourages demolition in favour of new-build – expressed my views alone and not those of Bark to Bark.
This is not an issue on which Bark to Bark – the campaign highlighting the damage and destruction of urban trees by dogs – has an opinion. Apologies for any confusion.
Meg Howarth
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