Now here is a hypothetical situation for you.
You are a small industrial town. There are falling numbers in the infant and primary schools that surround the town centre. The town centre contains plenty of unused empty factories that sadly went bump in the 80′s thanks to a certain person. The council decides to close down a number of the schools and amalgamate them into one facility. Do you:
a. CPO some land and build a new school on one of these central locations where factories used to be, being of within reasonable walking distance of the previous schools, served by a plentiful supply of public transport, bringing people into the town centre who will shop in local stores and on the market and redevelop currently derelict unused sites that aesthetically look awful or do you:
b. Build a school on a nature reserve right on the border with another local authority where there is one bus route that doesn’t go anywhere near most of the catchmment area of the previous schools (and this bus route actually doesn’t go within a 100 yards of the new school), isn’t within reasonable walking distance of most of the pupils, is on a busy road adjacent to a successful and expanding haulage company with lorries thundering past day in day out and should some obnoctious little bugger come along as sadly sometimes happens with schools and sets light to it, it doesn’t even have a sprinkler system.
Sadly this isn’t a hypothetical situation, it is what Walsall Council has proposed is the best solution for the future education of the children of Willenhall. Oh, and if you were wondering, they picked option ‘b’.
Now perhaps I’m a bit naive, perhaps I know nothing about planning, sustainable development, social impact studies or public finances but for what it’s worth, here’s my thoughts on the situation and a little bit of background information.
From the off I’ll say that neither I nor anyone I know opposed the need for the existing schools to be amalgamated. Yes, some parents weren’t happy but given the poor state of some of the schools in question of which some date back to the nineteenth century, the small and continuing to fall class sizes, there is overwhelming reason to seek to draw the schools together under one roof, allowing access to far better facilities and I even accept that there was no justification for having senior management, maintenance etc replicated across the schools.
Now originally the school was not to be located on the nature reserve, it was originally planned to reside on the playing fields which form part of the town park’s extension. A rather large petition of which I’ll admit to having been involved in was raised that scuppered this plan. However instead of doing the right thing and choosing option ‘a’ the council drew up new plans for locating it on the nature reserve.
I hear you ask where were the political parties while all this was going on? Well, to be fair and for those who don’t know the area here’s a bit of background on that as well. Willenhall is a small industrial town comprised of three wards, Willenhall South, Willenhall North, Short Heath and boasts an adult population of around the 30,000 mark. Willenhall South comprises the actually historic town centre area, Short Heath is pretty much a very large housing estate and suburban sprawl as of which is Willenhall North, although Willenhall North has absorbed the New Invention area which boasts a small shopping area and historically was a settlement in it’s own right. Willenhall South has 3 Labour Councillors, the other two wards combined have 6 LibDem Councillors. The Tories to all extent and purposes are not a viable political force in Willenhall and only turn up at election times.
Right, back to the issue. As all this is taking place in the Willenhall South ward, the Labour Councillors were very active in the campaign against the original plans opposing it every step of the way. The LibDems put out leaflets stating that they had also always been opposed to the scheme. OK, I couldn’t resist putting this dig in. You see, at the time when the original plans were put forward the council was run by a Tory/LibDem coalition and surprisingly the Cabinet member for Education was a LibDem. So what did these LibDems who had ‘always opposed the plans’ do? Well, actually they proposed the plan in the first place something for which I stated very clearly in a leaflet that I wrote, including copies of the LibDem leaflet at the time and the cabinet papers regarding the plan. The result of this was to get the three Labour Councillors referred to the Standards Board, a practice that was very common in Walsall for Labour Councillors but which seems to have waned over the past few months for some strange reason.
So we are left with a situation where we could have had a school in a central location, would allow parents to walk their kids there, or commute via public transport. It could have regenerated a good section of the town centre which to be frank does look a bit crappy. It would have brought parents into the town centre area encouraging local trade and the market. It would have been in an area of relatively low levels of traffic and easy to introduce a speed restriction zone. But no, we will have a school which is nowhere near the areas covered by some of the exisiting schools it will replace, is situated on a road where a haulage company is based, destroys green space, part of a nature reserve and the home of rare newts. Means that the only realistic access for many parents will be by car, increasing congestion and pollution and does nothing to aid trade or have positive knock-on effects for the town centre.
Sadly another crappy mess foisted on the the people of Willenhall by Walsall Council. For me personally as a parent, the only saving grace is that this being Walsall, my son may well be of secondary school age by the time anything gets built.
Final note. I believe, after yet another petition raised by the local Labour Councillors that the council has agreed to cough up