To answer any member questions
Minutes:
Agenda item 63 – Climate Emergency Action Plan.
Question
On carbon savings, the report states over the last year Wokingham Borough Council has worked in setting the ground to deliver projects that will increase the generation of renewable energy across the Borough….
And also the following:
My Journey completed summer and winter competitions in primary schools, and are currently running a film competition for secondary school students; but goes on to say that there are no new actions for this section.
My question is then: why did this Council create a situation where children who live In Arborfield Green, including those living directly opposite the new school gates were not allowed to go there and they have all had to be driven to other primary schools miles away from where they live. How will this achieve carbon saving?
Answer
At a strategic level our planning for the Borough’s Strategic Development Locations (or SDLs) has been underpinned by principles of creating sustainable communities that can sustain local access to services and amenities whilst minimising the need to travel. This is also underpinned by sustainable transport options both within and between SDLs and with existing main towns. Ensuring primary school provision to meet future anticipated need within these new communities has always been a key priority and, although pre-dating our Climate Emergency, fully in line with the principles of sustainable development by reducing the need to travel and minimising carbon impact.
Of course, in detail at any one point in time changing the overall pattern of primary provision and seeking to balance demand versus school places available across the system will never be an exact science and there will always be some anomalies. It is anticipated that these will reduce over time as these new communities mature.
With regard to Arborfield Green, the new school premises could not open as a new school in 2021, as there was insufficient local need to ensure that all local schools, including potentially both the Farley Hill Primary School and the Coombes CofE Primary School, in the Arborfield ward, could remain financially sustainable. In theory, relocating the Farley Hill Primary School would enable significant numbers of children from the former Arborfield Garrison, Arborfield Green and Finchwood Park areas to benefit from a school they could walk to, at the earliest opportunity. It also addressed the long-standing issue of some undersized classrooms in the original Farley Hill School building.
There has never been any intention that the new school would accommodate all the children living in the garrison area. In all, ninety children living in the garrison area were admitted to Wokingham primary schools in 2021 – accommodating all of them in a new school would have effectively wiped out the intake to a number of schools.
In more detail, the decision to build the new school was taken before the pandemic, when experience in Shinfield was that new housing could lead to rapidly rising rolls. The intention was to avoid children having to be driven to school. It became apparent in 2020 that demand was unlikely to increase to a level to make a new school viable (as a stand-alone school) or, if it had been filled and so was viable, the significant fall in the rolls of other schools would have threatened their viability.
A significant contributor to this lack of demand was the cessation of house building in the early part of the pandemic. Therefore, the decision was taken to relocate Farley Hill school with a phased expansion from the current 30 places per year through 60 to 90, in line with the the expected growth in the number of families in the area currently served by Farley Hill and the Coombes.
So, although the plan is to expand the school to offer 60 places from 2022, there is no expectation that all garrison area families will be accommodated (as is clear in the November 2021 report to the Executive) and there was no expectation that this would be the case in 2021. Indeed, the January 2020 Executive paper was clear that expansion above 30 places hinged on the impact on the Coombes.
Incidentally, I share your concern, as do headteachers. As a former Executive Member for Children’s Services and a former deputy head I am well aware that without a minimum number of children no school can be financed and, therefore, cannot function.
You may be interested to know that the newly formed Education Partnership, which includes 10 headteachers and the Director of Children’s Services, are going to discuss school places at the first meeting at the end of January.
Supplementary Question
Thank you very much, that is actually very helpful. The point really is that, if the developer had submitted a plan to build 2,000 houses on Arborfield Garrison and stated that he was not going to provide a primary school for the occupants of those houses the Council, quite rightly, would have refused that planning permission. So, it is very clear that the purpose of building that school was to accommodate the children on the garrison, for obvious reasons. The developer marketing those houses achieved sales because he offered a school on site – children could walk or cycle to school. This is all very “green” and is actually laudable.
My question is, how can the Council justify what you have just said and how does it bode for future large-scale developments? History shows that the Council cannot be trusted to deliver on the promises made, particularly on this site.
Supplementary Answer
I think that the essence of supplementary the answer was contained in my first answer. I will highlight that part.
A school can only be viable if it has sufficient numbers of children. Otherwise, it does not attract the finances. If you put all the children into one school in an area, that has an impact on surrounding schools which, of course, we do not want to undermine. As for the Climate Emergency, everything is a balance. Yes, we are committed to it but, at the same time, we are committed to keeping existing schools open. Nothing is as straightforward as we would like it to be, unfortunately. The fact is that the Council is aiming to support all primary schools, not just one at the expense of another.