Question
The Council is proposing to expand Aldryngton Primary School by 33% from 315 pupils to 410 pupils. Parents, local residents as well as the school itself have raised a number of questions and concerns, many of these have not yet been addressed by the Council.
For example, we continue to find it difficult to understand why a £4.8 million expansion is necessary despite the Council's own projection of 11% surplus school places from 2018 to 2021 in Earley if the expansion goes ahead.
No concrete measures have been presented by the Council to mitigate the impact of expansion on the already worrying congestion in the area surrounding the school. Furthermore, the Executive appears to have been misled by erroneous information at the time of approving Aldryngton Primary as a candidate for expansion in January 2016. For example, the findings of a WBC commissioned spatial study that found that Aldryngton is “the least attractive campus for investment” was misrepresented to the Executive.
We have been told by Children's Services that they are planning to have the Executive Meeting in February delegate their final decision making authority on the Aldryngton expansion to the Director of People Services, Judith Ramsden.
Considering how controversial the expansion proposal is, we do not see it as appropriate that the final decision is made in a forum not open to the public. We have serious concerns about whether our voices will be reflected at all in the decision making process and find it absolutely necessary to monitor reasoning applied for the council to reach a decision.
Please confirm that you will not allow such delegation to happen and that the final decision on the expansion will be made in a forum open to the public such as at the Executive Meeting, for the sake of transparency and to allow proper democratic participation.
Minutes:
Question
The Council is proposing to expand Aldryngton Primary School by 33% from 315 pupils to 410 pupils. Parents, local residents as well as the school itself have raised a number of questions and concerns, many of these have not yet been addressed by the Council.
For example, we continue to find it difficult to understand why a £4.8 million expansion is necessary despite the Council's own projection of 11% surplus school places from 2018 to 2021 in Earley if the expansion goes ahead.
No concrete measures have been presented by the Council to mitigate the impact of expansion on the already worrying congestion in the area surrounding the school. Furthermore, the Executive appears to have been misled by erroneous information at the time of approving Aldryngton Primary as a candidate for expansion in January 2016. For example, the findings of a WBC commissioned spatial study that found that Aldryngton is “the least attractive campus for investment” was misrepresented to the Executive.
We have been told by Children's Services that they are planning to have the Executive Meeting in February delegate their final decision making authority on the Aldryngton expansion to the Director of People Services, Judith Ramsden.
Considering how controversial the expansion proposal is, we do not see it as appropriate that the final decision is made in a forum not open to the public. We have serious concerns about whether our voices will be reflected at all in the decision making process and find it absolutely necessary to monitor reasoning applied for the Council to reach a decision.
Please confirm that you will not allow such delegation to happen and that the final decision on the expansion will be made in a forum open to the public such as at the Executive Meeting, for the sake of transparency and to allow proper democratic participation.
Answer
Thank you for your very detailed question and indeed for your correspondence to the Executive Member for Children Services regarding this matter.
Questions and concerns raised by parents have been addressed by Officers, local Members, myself, the Executive Member for Children Services, and I am not aware of any outstanding matters. I do appreciate that there are parents who wish for the proposal to be withdrawn but it is important for the Executive, at all times, to consider this matter thoroughly and with due regard to all Wokingham residents.
It is a matter of record that the projections show a surplus from 2018 onwards. However, the projections are led by births in the area. While we have good reason to believe that the demand is fed by housing churn and so reflects the number of children who were born in other areas who are moving to Earley. It is because of these movements, that can take place shortly before an application is made for a school place, that we have looked at the number of applications for 2017 Reception places in March before making the decision for this year.
The Council’s traffic study recommends that the proposal is manageable and without substantial impact on local traffic. Congestion caused by parents dropping their children at the school gates is a concern, as it is at many other schools, but I note that the vast majority of children choose other methods to travel to school.
Should this proposal go ahead we will continue to work with the school to ensure the local Travel Plan helps to mitigate impacts and will consider whether other measures such as Traffic Regulation Orders are appropriate.
In the proposal, additional staff car parking will be provided on site, with at least 12 spaces to meet the needs of the new staff required to support expansion and partly address an existing shortfall in parking spaces.
Lastly, I very much hope that you will find reassurance in our genuine wish for democratic transparency in actions taken by the Executive to agree that the school expansion proposals will not be delegated but will form the basis of a Special Executive to be held on 15th March.
Supplementary Question
Thank you, and I am happy to hear that you will be discussing the expansion at an extraordinary meeting, but the things you have just said still tells me that you have not heard all the points that the residents and parents are raising. Aldryngton has a very unique situation where it is next to a very big secondary school and with Tesco opening, pre-school students, public library all share a very narrow access road. The people have pointed out these things and also about the projections and the other concerns which, I think, were not included in what you just read. This makes me concerned that people have brought about all these points, which you don’t seem to be listening to, and wrote in objections to the planning applications but somehow this doesn’t seem to be reaching you.
I really appreciate that you are going to be discussing this in the extraordinary meeting but it still concerns me that we don’t have any way of having a dialogue about our concerns. That has been the case with our communications with the Council, unfortunately, so I would like to ask that at the extraordinary meeting, not only one question and then answers given and then one supplementary question. Is it possible that there could be a dialogue, a more interactive forum or an interactive discussion to be had with the parents and the Executive Members? I would like to ask if this can be accommodated at the extraordinary meeting in March.
Supplementary Answer which was provided by the Deputy Leader, Councillor McGhee-Sumner:
Richard has taken notes of what you have just said. I think it is a fair point if we have not actually answered those questions so we will report back to Charlotte Haitham-Taylor, who is the Executive Member, and then we will draft and get a response back to you.