Councillors please note that Oakhurst is not Taw Hill. Taw Hill is not Mouldon Hill, especially when it's a Country Park. Geography does not change on a political whim. Therefore residents in Oakhurst, who are well aware of the difference, have been telling ORA that they would like a local school in Oakhurst for their children to attend; a school that is not built at the expense of their country park.
Oakhurst needs a school
for Oakhurst. The proposed school at Mouldon Hill Country Park (renamed Oakhurst or Taw Hill by the politicians) is very
difficult for Oakhurst families to get to. They will have to cross the main road
twice and divert, on the footpath, through Taw Hill and then cross the revised railway route to even reach the front gates.
The demand for school places, as identified
in Swindon Borough Council's (SBC) cabinet report, is for Oakhurst and Redhouse. The over demand for Oakhurst Community Primary
School means that residents have to live within 200m of the school to stand a chance of getting their child a place. If the demand for the Mouldon Hill/Taw Hill school is
the same then Oakhurst families would fail to get their children into the school
on the basis of distance.
The site is
low lying and prone to flooding; it has overhead power lines which would be too costly to
bury and the children will have to cross the proposed Swindon & Cricklade line to access the
school. The Mouldon Hill Country Park belongs to the Swindon community just like Coate Water and Lydiard/Stanton parks. There is already precious little open space in North Swindon.
SBC
should not be setting precedents to build on public open space. There is great concern that there will be
more development on the country park after this school is built. Cllr Renard has already alluded to secondary
places in an article in the Adver.
Please find a more suitable location for the
school closer to the demand. The money for the Croft School should have been
spent where the demand had already been identified in North Swindon. Cllr Renard can't know how much the school is going to cost because he can't give the figures for burying the power lines, sorting the access, etc.
The PCT figures have been available for many
years that forecasted the likely demand for nursery and primary provision in our area. These are not extra places in North Swindon; these are places that have been demographically needed and are just being delivered late.
Our children deserve high quality education
provision in their local area that is safe and convenient to access by foot. A school in Oakhurst would be exactly that.
