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School fiasco that you couldn’t make up
• THE Pimlico School fiasco continues to run and run.
The magnitude of the Conservatives’ incompetence is summed up by Pimlico parent Ian Walsh, who is an unashamed sceptic when it comes to academies but who is willing to support the transfer of the school to venture capitalist John Nash, who has no experience of running a secondary school, on the grounds of “who wants to stay with Westminster council?”.
And without the slightest trace of shame or irony, Westminster Conservatives paint the setting up of an academy to replace Pimlico School as a great triumph.
So having run the school into the ground, which saw it put into special measures by Ofsted, Westminster Conservatives proclaim the move to academy status as a massive success.
Of course, many parents see the move away from Conservative control as the real and positive step forward for their children.
But what does the future hold for Pimlico pupils and parents?
Demolition work at the school has already started despite the fact that lessons are still taking place. And the new replacement building has been slammed by the government’s architectural watchdog, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, whose overall design quality rating was: “not yet good enough.”
Indeed, the CABE assessment was generally pretty damning: “Overall, the building lacks distinctiveness and does not yet live up to the quality and innovation of the 1970s building currently on the site or the context of Pimlico.”
So, despite spending over £35 million of government money, Westminster is going to get another boring, second-rate building and just days after planning cabinet member Robert Davis called on developers and architects to come up with innovative, creative and sustainable designs, warning them to “raise their game” to ensure the capital remains world class.
Sadly, it looks like Cllr Davis himself has failed at the very first hurdle on a building for which the council has itself got the ultimate responsibility for the quality of its design!
Parents’ anger is really best summed up by Ian Walsh’s reluctant admission that the only future for Pimlico is to get as far away as possible from Westminster Conservatives.
Believe it or not, in the warped world of Westminster Conservatives this is a triumph! As they say, you couldn’t make it up.
Cllr PAUL DIMOLDENBERG
Leader of the Labour Group
Westminster City Council
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