Free school plan rejected (From Oxford Mail)

Perhaps the best thing to do would be for the group to purchase the soon to be demolished Temple Cowley Pools complex instead?

This way the grounds could be shared with the adjacent council primary school...

Either way, it looks like the former Lord Nuffield Club will be back in the hands of an Administrator fairly soon.

A traditionally short sighted decision by councillors who only have their own agendas in mind as opposed to the wellbeing of the ciy and community. Questions have to be asked as to the suitabilty of these people to be in positions of authority.

Following the news that ONSchool, the proposal for a new secondary school for Oxford, has been rejected by the DfE for very flimsy reasons, the crisis in school places in Oxford is inevitable.

http://www.onschool.
org.uk/onschool-to-o
ff/

At a recent public event, I was attacked by a local councillor, who grandstanded for 15 mins - refusing to engage in a debate, only loudly accusing us of all sorts of untruths.

He accused me of putting the needs of kidss before principles. TOO BLOODY RIGHT.

The needs of today's kids are critically important - to more than their parents. It is part of the health of the city.

Yes, planning is an important process - and we need to protect outdoor spaces for kids. But the council keeps selling them off for development and restrictions prevent more innovative solutions.

I am against faith schools, and would have liked to see a different flavour of new primary school. However, for the elected councillors to prevent this school from opening and not to have engaged more positively in finding a solution shows the critical lack of imagination and care for our young people.

I am afraid our local democratic process has been failing the young people of Oxford for too long. Shame.

This is fantastic news! I realise it's not over though. My local community did not want the school or the housing, certainly at the beginning there were only 1 or 2 comments for the proposal and one of them from the Lib Dem councillor, Tony Brett, who only appeared dimly aware of what the whole thing meant and who doesn't live in the local community immediately affected.

We really thought we'd lose this battle, Cantay and the groups behind the school were acting cocky about the situation and were directly upsetting people living around the site by suddenly ticketing their cars and putting up fences for example.

The argument about school places is underhand and misleading. Whilst it is true that so many places are needed, 420 aren't needed in the local community, it's more like 20 places needed locally. Using a building within 1 local community (a building made for a difference purpose and without adequate grounds), to cater for several other communities is not the answer, the reason for this is because those children from those other communities would have to travel by vehicle.

The only sustainable answer is to increase school places within walking distance for the children that need them.

At a meeting at Oxford Spires Academy, that was apparently called for prospective parents but where only 3 people who weren't even parents turned up, I directly questioned Steve Jones about the traffic issues and had no satisfactory answer from him, his answer, to encouraging parents to walk children to school, was to use pester power! I think he even used the phrase "pester power". Essentially Steve Jones thinks he's going to get small children to pester their parents to walk them potentially miles for 3/4 hour (before a day's work!) instead of driving them to school. I believe he made this answer up on the spot though after looking rather uncomfortable at me asking the obvious question.

The contractor, Wilmott Dixon gave me no answer to the traffic problem either, he effectively told us that the human race was doomed anyway! I'm not joking here, I think his exact words were "the human race is unsustainable".

Chapel Street and Oxfordshire Community Churches (which is part of Evangelical Alliance), the two groups behind the school, have I think acted in an underhand manner, they abused words like "community". In their leaflet they wrote something like "the community has been waiting for this school". I think they used the word "community" in order to make it more appealing. People immediately think they are talking about the local community but they aren't, they are talking about the wider community, possibly Christian community.

What we have is a kind of conflation being used in order to sell the idea of this school. What should be most important here, what should override everything else, is the immediate local community. Yes it is important to provide school places of course, but not at the detriment of the local community. The same goes for the housing.

On the subject of the housing: Yes people need housing that they can afford, yes there are homeless people but I disagree with the likes of Antonia Bance who appears, from a conversation on Twitter, to think that we need to build houses whatever the cost, with little or no concern for the impact of that housing on the local community.

Personally I believe we need to get back our council housing stock and no more of this bedroom tax nonsense either.

Of course the interested parties can appeal, it won't change anything in reality, they can't make the site fit what is really needed, even if they had the whole of the field for the school, the simple fact of the matter appears to be that most of the children going to the school would have to come from outside the local community and travel by vehicle down roads that can't sustain the traffic on them as it is.

All of this should be stating the bleeding obvious really.

I'll finish this rant by saying: Please be very careful, if inconsiderate, unsustainable developments are allowed to go ahead they stand to permanently damage our local communities. They got rid of one of my old schools, Temple Cowley and build housing on it. That's very difficult or impossible to reverse.

Also worth noting that Windmill Primary School is within the walking distance catchment area that was drawn up for the proposed Tyndale School! My mum used to take my brother to that very school. This underlines the idea that school places should be created in the local communities where the children that need them live. What parent is going to want to walk their children around the golf course to get to Barracks Lane everyday instead of going to a more local school or driving?

This is the right decision for the building in question. Firstly it was designed and built as a social club. Of course it could be turned into a school, i've seen the proposed internal plans and they in no way make it a school. Secondly and very importantly the outside space for 420 pupils at just over half a hectare as stated, comes nowhere close to the standard as set by Oxfordshire County Council. In fact it's almost a quarter of the figure. Even utilising the rest of the site, where 43 dwellings were planning to be built the needs of outdoor space would not be met! You can poo poo the decision all you like but do you want your kids to attend a school that would see 420 of them packed in like battery hens?

Well said on every count, Joe.
I think the councillors on the East Area Planning Committee did a sound job. Rather than considering just the documentation fed them by the Planning Office and acting upon its recommendation, they clearly looked and listened further. The online webpages for the planning application bear witness to the concerns of the community (and by that I mean the truly local community, not the amorphous one dreamt up by the School). We pointed out again and again that for many reasons the location is unsuitable for a primary school, and a large one at that. Planning, Highways, etc dismissed our knowledge and experience of local conditions, as of course did the School; clearly the Committee members did not. Their agenda was therefore very much one of heeding the concerns that moved so many members of the local community to put pen to paper; they then voted accordingly. Now that IS local democracy in action and a welcome counter-balance to the subterfuges of the (unelected) planners.
But how can it be that apparently both the School and the Planning Office discounted OCC's standard for outdoor space? Or were they both ignorant of it? Neither scenario bodes well for putting children's well-being and safety first. Why have standards if they are to be steam-rollered aside at every hand's turn?

It is my understanding that a directly comparable position was taken by Bedford Borough Council last year where it refused permission for a Free School on similarly flimsy planning grounds. The result …. The planning inspector awarding the appeal in favour of the applicant together with an award of costs against the Council. From press reports this decision cost the Council Tax Payers of Bedford (not the Councillors who made the decision) more than £200,000. Perhaps the City Council would like to identify which front line services, or jobs, are to be cut when they lose this planning appeal which is inevitable – particularly as they seem to have ignored their officers and the local educations authority’s advice. As a local council tax payer, I certainly do not want to fund what seems on the face of it a daft decision to deprive primary school kids of an education with so much pressure on numbers. Can we afford to allow these councillors to gamble with our hard earned cash particularly as our Council Tax is on the increase?

Jack Simmons wrote:
It is my understanding that a directly comparable position was taken by Bedford Borough Council last year where it refused permission for a Free School on similarly flimsy planning grounds. The result …. The planning inspector awarding the appeal in favour of the applicant together with an award of costs against the Council. From press reports this decision cost the Council Tax Payers of Bedford (not the Councillors who made the decision) more than £200,000. Perhaps the City Council would like to identify which front line services, or jobs, are to be cut when they lose this planning appeal which is inevitable – particularly as they seem to have ignored their officers and the local educations authority’s advice. As a local council tax payer, I certainly do not want to fund what seems on the face of it a daft decision to deprive primary school kids of an education with so much pressure on numbers. Can we afford to allow these councillors to gamble with our hard earned cash particularly as our Council Tax is on the increase?

Ummm, Jack Simmons, what you omitted to say was that those Bedford Free School children are now condemned to having but a half square metre of space each in which to play; the school is on a busy congested route into town, in a location which the Bedford councillors felt also raised significant safety issues. Shall I go on? I hardly think therefore that the judgement in favour of the BFS is that commendable let alone a desirable precedent.
It is, however, probably likely, as you say, that the Tyndale School will win on appeal, but I, for one (as another local tax payer, and one living in the area immediately affected by this 'heinous crime') certainly don't begrudge the EAPC for having the moral fibre to challenge the application.

This strikes me as classic NIMBYism and in some cases pure spite from the Councillors.

Are we not missing the fact that come June when the planning laws relating to free schools are relaxed that this is merely a rubber stamping exercise?! Therefore the nay-sayers have merely delayed the inevitable, whilst costing the taxpayers as ever. God help us if the Bedford Free School appeal is anything to go by where the cost to the tax payer was over £200,000. That seems a rather high price simply to stroke a few Councillors egos if you ask me!

As I understand it, the Lord Nuffield Social Club has sat vacant for over 4 years. Because it was financially unviable as a concept, it has not found an occupier and was something of a white elephant. The building has deteriorated and before the current owners purchased it the grounds were nothing more than a scrubland where dog owners allowed their animals to defecate in abundance. Surely a community use such as the Free School is a step in the right direction, giving a purpose to an under utilised property.

Equally, like it or not, there is a shortage of school places for the coming academic year. I have not heard of any other deliverable suggestions to alleviate the problem - surely people should be thinking of the children here, not their own political point scoring tallies!

NIMBYism my foot. More like a sound reality check. Like I said, locals have first-hand knowledge of the area in question, of the traffic problems that occur (and which then feed back over the wider east Oxford area); of the width of the pavements along Hollow Way which are not sufficient to accommodate 'walking buses' as well as other pedestrians and young children heading in the opposite direction to existing primary schools in the immediate area, let alone cyclists and whoever else seeks the relative safety of the narrow pavement. And no alternative at times other than to step into the road in order to pass by others.
It was only a few days ago that a boy aged 10 (yes, that old...) was seriously injured on his way home from school in Bath by an ambulance on emergency call-out. What do we have along Hollow Way? All 3 emergency services - it's a main route for them. Plus single/double-decker buses, etc etc.
And can you describe to me how a child can be put down, let alone picked up, at a primary school in a narrow dead-end lane in 30 seconds flat (as I gather was thought possible)? It's not just a case of chuck out, or haul in, and drive off. In the afternoon in particular teachers need to establish that children are being collected by the right people. So will all 420 children be waiting at the school entrance at the end of the day ready for an ultra-fast getaway? Or will they be waiting in their respective classrooms? Look at the plans, internal and external. Look at the much-vaunted drop-off/pick-up/tur
nround point. And then imagine finding your child in 30 seconds flat without parking up, leaving your car and blocking others. Then, were a 30-second pickup even remotely feasible, work out how long it would take to clear just 100 cars through the area, then back up the lane, then through the traffic lights and onto Hollow Way itself. Even if there were a staggered start/end to the school day, and even given a 30-second turnaround, the school traffic would be highly likely to feed into the wider east Oxford rush-hours. That's one sizeable back yard for a case of NIMBYism.
But I agree with you on one thing, God help us (indeed) if the Bedford Free School appeal is anything to go by.

The Truth Really Hurts wrote:

EylanEzekiel wrote:
Following the news that ONSchool, the proposal for a new secondary school for Oxford, has been rejected by the DfE for very flimsy reasons, the crisis in school places in Oxford is inevitable.

http://www.onschool.


org.uk/onschool-to-o


ff/

At a recent public event, I was attacked by a local councillor, who grandstanded for 15 mins - refusing to engage in a debate, only loudly accusing us of all sorts of untruths.

He accused me of putting the needs of kidss before principles. TOO BLOODY RIGHT.

The needs of today's kids are critically important - to more than their parents. It is part of the health of the city.

Yes, planning is an important process - and we need to protect outdoor spaces for kids. But the council keeps selling them off for development and restrictions prevent more innovative solutions.

I am against faith schools, and would have liked to see a different flavour of new primary school. However, for the elected councillors to prevent this school from opening and not to have engaged more positively in finding a solution shows the critical lack of imagination and care for our young people.

I am afraid our local democratic process has been failing the young people of Oxford for too long. Shame.

The reason that we wanted this heinous crime rejected was that according to your website the school was looking at OX1 and OX2 as the prime intake of students. I.E. The well off kids from Leafy North Oxford and Millionaires row Boars Hill. The Mummy's are hardly going to walk their kids to school form there are they? What help is that to school places for the local area? Lies are always found out in the end.

Dear The Truth (!) Really Hurts - You have made a series of mistakes here. Sorry if this hurts - but let me show you the truth and show you where:

"The reason that we wanted this heinous crime rejected was that according to your website the school was looking at OX1 and OX2 as the prime intake of students. I.E. The well off kids from Leafy North Oxford and Millionaires row Boars Hill. "

NO - our site and proposal was for OX3 and OX4 - so you did not read the detail that was there - but only took in what you expected to see. The DfE did say this about our proposal:

"Your application’s vision and moral purpose to provide a small, secular school that will improve the outcomes and destinations for students, particularly those from a disadvantaged background, is strong."

So - You are wrong.

Then you said:
"The Mummy's are hardly going to walk their kids to school form there are they? What help is that to school places for the local area? Lies are always found out in the end."

By 2014 there will be 200 places too few in the secondary schools in the City. nearly a 1000 by 2017. Much of the pressure is in the South of the city.... where we intended to be.

As to you comment about 'lies' - I guess you are right, at least, about that..

The Lord Nuffield Club closed due to mismanagement not to the fact that it was mismanaged. The Council very stupidly let the old site be sold and bulldozed to allow a private company to build some of it's houses to save the Council having to do so. The club was already in trouble and i believe bankrupt when the Council happily agreed the deal. Why would you give a bankrupt business more cash to squander in the hope that the next time they might get it right; oh yes POLITICS.
The school if opened was looking to take in pupils from postcode areas OX1, 2, 3 and 4 as stated in its Admissions Policy. 420 pupils would have an outside playing area approx slightly less than 40 metres by 40 metres the size of the old bowling green. The ground that the school has is completely separate from the playing fields which were well used by kids and adults alike playing games and enjoying the open space. The owner of this land wants to build 43 houses on the old playing field and has apparently no links to the school other than selling it. Remember that the old playing field used to be a county class cricket ground for many years. The site for a school is totally unsustainable as it stands,the building as planned is totally unacceptable as a school, the admissions policy for that school is environmentally unsound and these 3 together make it wholly unviable.

So now it will be bought by Tesco who will leave it abandoned until it crumbles or maybe a cheap as chips hotel chain to add another storey on top?

It is no wonder that there is a lack of school places available for our youth with attitudes such as this from people in positions of authority. One has to ask if the planning system for educational facilities is really serving wider society or merely handing more power to those who put personal agenda's before the welfare of our children. It is incredulous that people try to justify this decision when this is the situation we find ourselves in today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk
/news/education-2178
5796

Those behind this decision clearly have a lot to answer for.

The story just gets better. According to your Oxford Times article a housing development for 43 dwellings on the rest of this site together with 2 all-weather mini football pitches was also refused by our esteemed elected representatives. I checked this out on the council planning website, and apparently 27 of the 43 units was affordable housing and the developers suggest the pitches would be available for use by both the school and the public (according to their submission anyway - if you choose to believe it). Two daft decisions by the Custodians of the City then, one which denies kids an education and the other depriving those on the City Council Housing waiting list somewhere to live, all for what .......... placating locals by preserving derelict land and buildings which no one can use apart from those who might wish to do so illegally. The Oxford Mail and Times constantly remind us of the Crisis in housing and shortage of school places. I assume this is based on fact, so, talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth! These Council decisions do not make any sense whatsoever - no doubt a government inspector will make the decision for them - at Council Tax payers expense no doubt! Local politics at it's worst.

I read jack Simmons comments in disbelief until I checked them out for myself. It's true. The council in their wisdom have turned down free schooling and free housing. Given the dismal performance of the local authority to produce any meaningful numbers of social housing units you would have thought that 27 units would have been celebrated!! I wonder what percentage of the councils annual provision of social units this 27 totalled?

In addition they turned down community facilities. So in summary the council and local councillors are anti education, anti community and anti affordable housing. A very very sad state of affairs and one it seems will not go unpunished by a planning inspector at further cost to the local tax payer if earlier reports are to be believed.

Can't these councillors be held personally accountable for their actions or summoned by the paper to justify their actions before the local tax payer picks up the tab for their politicking

Concerned about the future of this city wrote:
I read jack Simmons comments in disbelief until I checked them out for myself. It's true. The council in their wisdom have turned down free schooling and free housing. Given the dismal performance of the local authority to produce any meaningful numbers of social housing units you would have thought that 27 units would have been celebrated!! I wonder what percentage of the councils annual provision of social units this 27 totalled?

In addition they turned down community facilities. So in summary the council and local councillors are anti education, anti community and anti affordable housing. A very very sad state of affairs and one it seems will not go unpunished by a planning inspector at further cost to the local tax payer if earlier reports are to be believed.

Can't these councillors be held personally accountable for their actions or summoned by the paper to justify their actions before the local tax payer picks up the tab for their politicking

If this is correct, it's absolutely outrageous! I heard, through a builder mate of mine who has quite a bit to do with the City's Housing Department, that the City Council are currently looking at development options on all their land that has a sniff of a chance for housing as they are required to build 115 social properties in the next 18 months.

By granting permission to build on what is essentially scrubland and dog toilet, they would cover off nearly a quarter of that liability which the taxpayer will undoubtedly be paying for anyway. At least this way the houses are just given to the City as opposed to them having to build them.

Mind you, by the time they refuse themselves planning permission on their own sites, then appeal against themselves, I would imagine that there won't be any cash left over to build the 115 houses anyway!

Well there you go, as expected, another few hundred thousand pounds of Council tax payer money down the drain, purely to make a point. They could have jazzed up a few more public toilets for that kind of money! Add to this…… the debacle over University accommodation adjacent to Port Meadow, where any action by the Council to attempt to revoke a permission they have granted will wipe out the City coffers and make Cyprus look solvent …….telling Network Rail that they cannot erect a bridge across the railway unless it is a specific type – knowing full well that Network Rail can take the existing one down without permission and not have a permission to erect a new one…… brilliant Ted. You would be forgiven for thinking that our elected representatives would be better suited to Craggy Island Parish Council rather than being entrusted with the keys to what is left of the City coffers.

Well said Jack. You should stand for local government as opposed to these buffoons currently steering the once proud ship Oxford straight towards the rocks. You have said more sense in a few sentences than this council has in years. What disastrous decisions are they likley to make next I wonder as they consider their final coup de grace for the future supposed welfare of this City; that is if they haven't bankrupted us all by then.