This article represents the views
of Oakhurst residents who want an Oakhurst school for Oakhurst children
Residents report witnessing
an injustice being perpetrated against Oakhurst families and their children at
the Mouldon Hill school consultation session at the Tawny Owl on 23 January
2013.
First and foremost there is
a serious shortfall in the number of primary school reception places in
Oakhurst and Redhouse. Numerous
residents have reported having their reception age children placed, against
their preference/s, as far away as Rodbourne Cheney, Pinehurst and West Swindon
for the September 2012 academic year. In
fact, ORA have been told by Oakhurst residents that they are thinking of moving
or have been forced to move to secure a local school place for their
child.
The stated need for primary
school places, according to SBC’s own documents, is in Oakhurst and
Redhouse. It therefore seems illogical
that the proposal for the new school should be at Taw Hill/Mouldon Hill and
with a consultation taking place in Taw Hill only. Surely if the shortfall is in Oakhurst and
Redhouse then the consultation, at the very least, should have taken place there
to get the views of the residents the school is intended to serve.
There is a risk that holding
the consultation in Taw Hill for a proposed school in Taw Hill will lead to an
artificially biased result for the consultation – indeed one resident from Taw
Hill was heard to say that the school was in the wrong place, and should not be
built on Mouldon Hill Country Park, but they were supporting it if their children
could get a school place in Taw Hill.
Residents are already aware
that living more than a couple of hundred metres from a school will effectively
make it impossible to get a place in a local school. So how can it be practical or sensible to
build a school so far away from the communities it is purported to be there to
serve? People in Oakhurst, particularly
the ones in the Mayfly Road corner, will have little or no chance of getting
their children into a school at Taw Hill.
The proposed school will more likely be used by families in Mouldon Bridge,
Ridgeway Farm and Taw Hill; all areas substantially closer to the site but not where
the need is documented.
There was also concern that
comments were only being sought for one of the Taw Hill/Mouldon Hill sites,
even though the other sites were being displayed on the maps. These other sites were not shown on the SBC
website and were therefore not freely visible to residents who did not make it
to the consultation in Taw Hill. This
leads residents to think that the extra sites were simply there to give the
appearance that there had been other options, when in fact there were not. At no point did the consultation survey ask
about these other sites or even let residents know that they were a
possibility. This has led residents to the worrying
conclusion that they are intended to simply make the consultation look more
exhaustive than it actually is – residents hope that this not the case.
There is a risk with the on-line
survey that it only requests a postcode from residents filling it out. There is no guarantee that this survey was
not open to fraudulent manipulation.
What process is in place to stop someone submitting multiple responses,
either for or against the site, to manipulate the result of the
consultation? There is no way of
determining if the person filling out the on-line form actually lives at the
postcode they have claimed to represent or are simply using a postcode finder
service to identify postcodes in the area to use.
Residents have very strong
views about allowing the precedent of building on a public open space in the
Mouldon Hill Country Park. They don't think it is alright for the Borough to attempt to do something that they would not allow a private developer to do.
However with the recent issues at Pickard’s Field there is an obvious question
mark. If residents are to condone the
building of a school by SBC on Mouldon Hill Country Park they are opening up a
loophole that developers are sure to exploit.
This was amply demonstrated with the recent Ridgeway Farm appeal. The Borough argument that the development
should not be built up against the Swindon border, as SBC wanted to preserve a
green buffer between Swindon and Wiltshire, was turned down by the Planning
Inspector as, by building up to its own border, Swindon had set the precedent
for not having a green buffer.
The Mouldon Hill site also
suffers from many other issues – many of which were made clear in the Cabinet
Papers dated 12th December 2012, paragraph 3.23 - “it must be noted that there are potentially a number of issues that
could arise through locating a primary school on the Mouldon Hill site: linked
to access off the dual carriageway and across the Swindon and Cricklade Railway
line, the need to bridge a floodplain to reach the school site and to reroute
power lines that traverse the site. These issues could have a significant
impact on the cost of any new provision on top of the construction costs....”
With reference to a site at
Redhouse site SBC have made the statement that it appeared to be too
small. Residents would like to know if the option of including a
community facility in the school has been considered? If it has, then the adjacent land earmarked
for the community centre could be utilised as playing pitches for the school
site.
Surely it would have made
more sense to have an open and transparent consultation outlining all of the
options available, held in the area the school is supposed to serve, rather
than one outside of the area that only considers one of the many sites shown.
The Oakhurst residents urge
SBC to reconsider their proposals to build a school on public open at
Mouldon Hill Country Park. SBC should listen to the Oakhurst residents and build a school for
Oakhurst children in Oakhurst.
