Many of our meetings recently have included a matter of immediate interest to local people - the Reading Borough Council proposal for the Relocation of Park Lane School.
The cabinet meeting, 25th September 2006, agreed to go ahead with a second consultation relating to the relocation and rebuilding of Park Lane School and Blagrave Nursery, Health Clinic, Library. The new proposals include:
Tilehurst Globe were critical of the first consultation in that it was biased to giving "the correct answer". It is to be hoped that the next consultation will be fair and allow local people to give their views on the new proposals.
At the cabinet meeting in March 2006, a petition signed by 790 people was presented by Jo Matthewson to the Council. The wording of the petition was
Blagrave Recreation Ground, Tilehurst, is a much loved, popular, urban park. I have added my signature to this petition because I strongly believe that it would be an irreversable mistake to develop any part of Blagrave Recreation Ground now or at any time in the future. It should remain a recreation ground for ever.
When presenting petitions the protocol allows 3 minutes for the presentation. In this particular case, the Mayor rudely interrupted Jo's presentation. Following correspondence, Mr John Painter did apologise for the breach in Council procedure. However, the mayor himself needed further prompting for an apology.
At a round table meeting (23.07.04) organised by Martin Salter between Education Department and Tilehurst GLOBE representatives it was agreed that:
After the business of the meeting the group watched a video extract about a school built on a constrained site. Adrian Smith reported that he expected consultants to be conversant with modern school design and good practice exemplars.
When Reading Borough Council initially divulged their plans for the Tilehurst Community Facilities, we organized a meeting about the proposals. We were pleased to have at our meeting Andrew Daykin, Director of Education and Community, other officers of Reading Borough Council connected with the proposals, and Jo Lovelock, Lead Cllr for Education. A large number of local people also attended the meeting. They came to hear what the officers had to say about the proposals, to ask questions and to state their views. Click here to read the minutes of the meeting and to see what Tilehurst Globe put forward as an alternative.
Tilehurst Globe sent Andrew Daykin a response to the RBC proposals.
We have also asked a lot of questions about their proposals; we have received a written reply which is not entirely satisfactory. In fact this response has shown a considerable degree of inconsistency in their arguments. Questions about the plans for the library are glossed over, questions about the open space that we would be left with are unanswered etc. Read what they say and what we say: Our questions about the RBC proposals.
We have also canvassed local views on the council's initial proposals regarding the relocation of the School, encouraged local people to put forward their views and comments to the council. We have found that there is a large number of people who are against the plans to put Park Lane School on the central Laurels site. In particular the proposal to sell the current Park Lane Site and Downing Rec to developers for housing has been greeted with dismay. The proposal to take very large part of Blagrave Rec is also not welcome by many people. We obviously cannot say whether this view is the majority view, so we organised an Action Day in the rec to see what people think about the plans. We look forward to the results of the RBC questionnaire.
One of the main concerns is that Blagrave Rec is Charity Land, given by John Henry Blagrave.Click here to see a copy of the Charity Commission documents (including a copy of the original document). The Trustees of Blagrave Recreation Ground are Reading Borough Council. Many local residents think that this represents a conflict of interest in that one the one hand they are acountable as trustees to maintaining the land for the purposes laid out in the deed poll; on the other hand their initial proposals for the relocation of Park Lane School depend on the Charity Commission allowing them to take a large part of the blagrave Rec for other uses. The Charities Act incorporates a number of regulations regarding the disposition of Charity Land. Click here to see a copy of this section of the Charities Act.
As part of the consultation exercise, RBC has produced a leaflet outlining the proposals and inviting people to fill in a questionnaire with their views of the proposals. There has been quite a lot of criticism of the questionnaire. The local view is that it is very biased to giving "the correct answer". Tilehurst Globe sent their view of the consultation process to RBC.
For further information about Tilehurst Globe contact Tilehurst Globe
Email TilehurstGlobe@hotmail.com