Brockley Society Meeting about Gordonbrock School

Brockley Society, at the request of a number of parents of Gordonbrock Primary School, has agreed to hold an extra meeting to discuss their legal action against the Council with regards to the planning application for the school. Their invitation reads:

"OPEN MEETING: Proposals for refurbishment of Gordonbrock School. Tuesday 4 May, 8pm-9.30pm, Crofton Park Baptist Church, Brockley Grove (cnr Huxbear Street), SE4 1EA.

Brockley Society would like to present its alternative proposals to those of Lewisham council for the modernisation of Gordonbrock School. Working with a number of Gordonbrock parents and our architect, we have sought to demonstrate that there are alternatives to demolition and rebuilding, still achieving all of the goals for the school, and within budget.

We will explain why we intervened, and why so late. There will also be an opportunity for all interested parties to express their views and ask questions. All welcome."

A number of parents from Gordonbrock have asked that the motion below be put to the meeting:

"In light of the current economic climate and the certainty that budget for a school refurbishment shall be lost should work not commence this financial year, the Brockley Society shall offer no further objections to the redevelopment of Gordonbrock School".

I'm anticipating a lively and well-attended meeting, and (optimistically perhaps) hoping some kind of common ground can be found within the community.

Gordonbrock decant delay - a bit more info

I've been out and about in the ward over the past few days, spoken to a fair few residents and understandably the delay to Gordonbrock School's decant is the number one issue on many people's minds. Lots of concern over the impact this will have on pupils, some children in tears at the news (having spent a large part of this term preparing for the decant), parents left out of pocket having arranged childcare for the extended holidays that wouldn't now be needed and on the whole, great annoyance.

Even some of those who had not been keen on the rebuild plans or the prospect of their children being bussed to Greenville for 18 months said they had got used to the idea, prepared their children, and now the rug has been pulled from under them. Unsurprisingly, I didn't meet a single parent delighted at the prospect of their children being educated in those awful huts in the playground for another 6 months.

A little more info I gleaned from officers:

Parents Meeting: There will be a meeting for parents of Gordonbrock pupils at the school on Thursday 25th March at 7pm to discuss the situation.

Funding:
One of the key concerns parents have raised is whether the funding will still be there in 6 months time, given the economic climate, the forthcoming general and local elections, and the prospect of a new government making big cuts. Officers said that a large part of the funding for the work is due to come from council prudential borrowing rather than central government funding which means that, assuming the incoming Mayor after 6th May supports the project, the chances of it going ahead are pretty high and not wholly at the mercy of a new national government.

A lot of people I spoke to were highly suspicious about the reasons given for the delay, given that funding was withdrawn in 2005, and thought it was some kind of council ruse to avoid rebuilding Gordonbrock. Nothing I've heard from officers so far makes me think this is the case and I believe the Mayor is still fully committed to the project (and will hopefully confirm this to reassure parents in the next few days). Never say never, however.


What happens next?
Things should become clearer to everyone by the end of this week, but it looks like the planning application will have to be resubmitted and the process gone through again. As I understand it, this is due to a mistake by the planning department and picked up on by Brockley Society lawyers, in not getting an Environmental Impact Assessment done, which apparently is required for sites over half a hectare.

Clearly there are lessons to be learnt by the planning department here, and potentially exceedingly expensive ones for the Council (going through the whole planning process again, securing the decant site and temporary classrooms for six months, legal costs etc won't come cheaply).

Council Officers, together with the head teacher and a governor, are meeting with representatives from Brockley Society this Friday, to discuss their legal letter and feasibility study and have promised to update ward councillors shortly after that.

In addition, Ute and I have a meeting with the Council officers leading on the project this Wednesday. If you have specific questions you would like us to put to them, do let us know, or of course you can ask them at the parents meeting on Thursday evening.

Gordonbrock Decant - delayed

I found out today that the decant and rebuilding programme for Gordonbrock School has been delayed by six months due to a legal challenge by Brockley Society. I heard from Council officers on Tuesday evening that a delay was likely, and letters were sent home to parents yesterday confirming this. I understand that Council officers and Brockley Society representatives will be meeting next week to discuss the legal challenge, and hopefully more will become clear after that. There will also be a meeting for parents at the school soon, date tbc.

I don't know the details, but my understanding is that the challenge is to do with whether or not the Council carried out an environmental impact assessment as part of the planning process.

At this stage I've got a lot more questions than I have answers, and am keen to get more information from officers as soon as possible, particularly about what the financial implications of this latest delay will be. While I've been quite vocal in my criticism of aspects of the planning application, in particular the appearance of the new building, I worked constructively with officers to secure some (modest) improvements to it, and was clear that the latest application was an improvement on the 2005 application in a number of ways. I am concerned that this latest delay may jeopardise the funding, and while I think the current plans are far from perfect, they are far better than no improvements at all. It would be awful for the school to once again lose the funding, as happened 5 years ago.

In addition to the legal challenge, Brockley Society have published a feasibility study suggesting an alternative way of refurbishing the existing buildings, without demolishing any of them, but still increasing capacity to three form entry, creating larger classrooms, a large assembly hall etc. The document, looks professionally produced and clearly the society have put a lot of time and effort into it, but comes very late in the day, just a few weeks before the decant was scheduled to start. I've asked officers for their views on the viability of what is proposed in it, and what the financial implications would be.

I hope to be able to be able to post more information soon, when I have it. In the meantime I've set up a straw poll on the site to gauge readers' opinions. If the options I've given don't cover your view, please use the comments section of this post to share them.

Gordonbrock Decant and Rebuild

I realise I've been slightly out of the loop on the Gordonbrock decant and rebuild plans since the planning committee meeting. Just seen on the school website that there was a meeting for parents on 21st January about the decant and the presentation can be viewed here. The decant is scheduled to start on 10th April, after the Easter Hols and Ladywell Day Centre Sports Hall in Dressington Ave to be used as drop off collection point.

I've asked for a briefing from officers to update me - any specific queries/concerns about the decant that you want me to raise on your behalf?

Gordonbrock Primary School - planning application submitted

A planning application has been submitted for the partial demolition and partial rebuild of Gordonbrock Primary School. The application can be viewed here. The plans are a revision of those submitted and passed back in 2005, before the project was shelved due to funding probems. I'm pleased that this is again now firmly back on the agenda and my understanding is that if planning permission is granted this Autumn, the school will be decanted and the rebuild start in January.

Part of the reasoning behind the rebuild is to enable the school to go from 2.5 form entry to 3 form entry, which as well as creating much needed extra primary school places, avoids the need to have classes with mixed age groups. I'm pleased that it's proposed to retain parts of the Victorian school building, that the awful portacabins in the playground that are long past their sell-by date will finally be going and of course that more, larger classrooms will be built.

Last week I went along to a drop-in session at the school to look at the plans. There were a number of positive aspects to them, with lots of outside play space, including provision for outdoor teaching areas and for the recently-acquired play equipment and raised borders to be incorporated into the new designs. One of the pupils asked the officer 'Are you going to cut down our trees?' and was assured that the trees would be retained, which is just as well, as this 9-year old looked ready for some direct action to protect them if the need arose!

However there were a number of aspects to the design which left me distinctly underwhelmed, in particular the wasted roof space, with no plans for either living roofs, solar panels, rainwater recycling or anything else that should frankly be standard in contemporary design. The school will be fulfilling its 20% renewables target with a biomass boiler - this seems to be the renewable energy source of choice for schools at the moment, (mostly on value for money grounds), which is good as far as it goes, but there are no plans to exceed the minimum requirement. I had expected to see a few other 'green gubbins', such as a few solar panels on the roofs, even if more for educational purposes, rather than making a significant contribution to the school's energy needs, but currently none are proposed.

Having just spent the past few months on the Sustainable Development Committee doing an in-depth review of home insulation within the borough (more on this soon), I had also expected the rebuild to incorporate some internal insulation of the Victorian buildings that are being retained, to bring them as close as possible to modern building requirements. Again, it doesn't seem to be on the cards. This looks like a missed opportunity to explore how to make our Victorian/Edwardian buildings in the borough more energy efficient, which will also be key to other school rebuilds/refurbs around the borough.

Having discussed various aspects of the design with the council officer leading on the project, as well as representatives from Bouyges, the PFI contractor, I was left with the impression that Gordonbrock was being short changed on sustainability due to cost restrictions. (Bouyges is the company behind the recent rebuild of Prendergast Ladywell Fields school, which personally I think is a distinct disappointment in sustainability terms.) Recycling is all well and good, but when you recycle building plans from 5 years ago, you need to ask what has moved on in that time and surely, sustainable design issues given the need to reduce our carbon emissions have leapt right up the global agenda in the past five years.

I don't wish to be overly negative as I want to wholeheartedly support the school rebuild, which parents, pupils and staff have been waiting for for a very long time now, but I fear that unless the contractors are pushed a bit further on the designs, Ladywell is going to get a good new primary school, with a much improved learning environment, but not the exemplar of sustainability we should be aiming for. Officers have promised to see what more can be done to address some of my concerns, so I await their feedback on these discussions and am hoping for a few improvements before this gets to planning committee stage.