NEWS RELEASE: Avanti: Government and Barnet Council need to go back to school
Andrew Dismore, Labour London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden, has today published the response he has received from Government free schools minister Lord Nash, (attached).
Mr Dismore said:
I suggested to the Council, the Mayor of London and the Government, they should make available to Avanti part of the soon to be vacated land on the MOPAC owned and Mayor Johnson controlled Peel Centre police training college site in Colindale.
Lord Nash says:
“We have had preliminary discussions with Barnet Council to establish whether the
MOPAC site could be suitable for Avanti House Free School. From the information
available, it seems that it may not be large enough for the schools requirements”
But the Peel Centre site to be sold is 54.36 acres, whilst the Broadfields site is just 4.4 acres and the Fairway site is only 3.7 acres, a mere fraction of the Peel Centre land soon to be disposed of and available. If the school seems to think that amount of land is enough for them, why did Barnet Council, in their “preliminary discussions” with the Government, suggest the Peel Centre site was too small?
There seems to be either a breakdown in communication between the Council, the Mayor, the school, and the Government, or they need to go back to school to learn some basic geometry and arithmetic on how to calculate area sizes.
The Mayor said he wanted to use redundant police stations and land for free schools, so what is wrong with this site? It is ideal: it already has plenty of open space and even a running track, and the road and transport links are far easier.
The suspicion must be that something fishy is going on. Surely the suggestion of using the Peel Centre land for a free school instead of yet more housing overdevelopment is not being refused because it interferes with the Conservatives’ social engineering housing experiment in Colindale?
Whilst the Minister says that both the Fairway and Broadfields sites are “only options”, time is running out for the school’s planned and necessary move in September into temporary premises.
Are they planning, with the connivance of the Conservative Council, to take advantage of the age old dodgy developers’ trick by fast tracking a planning application during the Summer holidays, when the opportunity for most people to object will be much less- even on the very restricted remaining grounds still available after the Government watered down the planning rules, to the detriment of local communities and the benefit of free school proprietors?
It’s time for the Government , Mayor, Barnet Council and school to play fair with local residents and say just what they have been up to in secret behind the scenes.”
