Proposed new High School – the facts
In Ealing Conservative’s manifesto for the 2006 elections, we committed to look into whether we could identify a site for a new school in the north of the Borough. There has been a campaign for many years for a high school in the Horsenden/Perivale area. A look at this map shows that there is an aching void of provision at High School level in the north, with only Northolt High north of the A40 and that is very much at the westerly end of the borough.
When we won control in 2006 I asked for a feasibility study of projected pupil numbers and available sites. The numbers were frankly terrifying. Ealing is partly a victim of our its own success. As a result of improving schools, great performance, particularly at key stage 3 and 4 (that’s GCSE/O’levels to you and me) there is a rising pressure on places. The retention rate (the number of our pupils in our primary schools that want to go to our high schools) is higher than it has been for a decade. Add in to that the fact that Ealing folk seem to be particularly fertile at the moment (our birth rate has shot up from around 3500/year to around 4000) and the general increase in population through immigration, the projections show that we could need 2 new high schools! All of a sudden the high school in the north was no longer a “wouldn’t it be nice to have”, but a “we desperately need”.
Ealing has entered wave 5 of Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme which (to be fair to the Government) is a massive investment in our high schools – some £230 million in Ealing. The problem is that this money will not fund purchasing of land to build a school, only that actual construction. For a new high school we need around 7.5 hectares – around £30 million is the estimate to purchase this land. At Ealing Council’s Cabinet meeting last night, Cllr Johnson, Labour’s finance spokesman (sorry person) asked about the funding of the new school and where the money to buy a new site was in the published accounts.
The answer is, it isn’t. The Council, which is facing real term cuts in revenue support from central Government doesn’t have that sort of money to buy a site with, especially when you think that the pressure on primary places means that I’m currently consulting on expanding our provision by 12 forms of entry (the equivalent of building 6 new primary schools) and as a consequence of Ealing being a “floor authority” (bit technical but it effectively means that the Government thinks we should have less money so that it can send it to its friends in the north), we have no real funding to provide this expansion.
The net result is that we either have to build the new high school on land we own (generally open spaces) or come to an agreement with a landowner to give us land at an affordable price. The current situation is that we have identified Ealing Central Sports Ground in Perivale as a potential site, along with various options around the Glaxo sites. Clearly we don’t own the Glaxo site. Negotiations are continuing on this basis.
Our life would be made much easier if the Government would recognise the exceptional need we have and provide funding to purchase a brownfield site. I wrote to Steve Pound MP, who claims to want to save the Ealing Central Sports Ground and wants us to use a brownfield site to ask him whether the Government would fund the purchase – he said no and suggested that we could negotiate a deal by allowing building some houses as a buy-off. I’m not sure how many houses you need to build to recoup £30 million plus land value, but I imagine it would mean Greenford getting it’s own leaf style skyscraper - is that what the local MP really wants?
Then we come on to the recent vote in the House of Commons about 42 day detention without trial. Our MP had taken a stand on this issue saying :
“Of course I respect the Police and believe that they should be given the tools they need to keep us safe but sometimes even supporters have to say “no” and I deeply regret that this is one of those occasions.”
Alas when it came to the vote he towed the Party line and voted with the Government. I hoped that he’d done a DUP, who allegedly obtained £1.2 billion of investment in Northern Ireland, to buy their votes. I hoped Steve might at least have negotiated the £30 million for the brownfield site in exchange for his principles.
Alas I’m still waiting for the cheque to arrive in the post!
Tags: 42 days, Ealing Central Sports Ground, Ealing North, Glaxo, New High School, Steve Pound
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