Since you received a letter (see below) from Mrs Rush, our Chair of Governors, we have had many questions asking how you can express your views. If you wish to contact someone to make your views known then our local councillors are:
- Rebecca Charlwood ([email protected])
- Alex Sobel ([email protected])
- Sharon Hamilton ([email protected])
You should also contact Leeds City Council Children’s Services – you can email your views from this link.
Alternatively you can wait until the planning application is submitted (expected end of March) and follow the instructions on that to make an objection.
Cllr Sobel has asked via a tweet to note that a meeting with Children’s Services, councillors and representatives from the school has now been arranged. I’m happy to update you on this matter. The meeting is provisionally arranged for Tuesday 01 April.
As some of you may be aware the former Yorkshire Bank field behind the school has recently been sold to a developer who has outline planning consent to build a small number of houses on the site.
Throughout the consultation and design process, the governing body of Moortown Primary School has worked with Moortown Community Group, Lime Tree Community Trust, our local ward councillors and the developers. We were led to believe at all stages that some provision for the school would be made in any planning application submitted.
Last autumn, outline planning consent was granted and the above groups all came together to give input to the Stakeholder Workshop held in November 2013. Again, we were led to believe that a portion of the land would be used for housing and the remaining land (around eight acres) would be given to Leeds City Council with some of it becoming a public park and some it being for the school.
Mr Roundtree and I have also met with various members of Leeds City Council Children’s Services (including the Director of Children’s Services, the Chief Officer for Strategy Commissioning and Performance, the Head of Service for Strategic Development and Investment, and the Lead Member for Education) since September 2012 to try to make sure that they are involved in this planning decision and to try to secure some land for the school.
Unfortunately all our hard work and campaigning seems to have been ignored.
At a meeting in February 2014, organised by Moortown Community Group, the developers told us that the plans they were going to submit contained no provision for the school. This decision had been reached working with our local ward councillors, the Parks and Countryside department and the Planning departments of Leeds City Council.
On finding this out, we have tried to arrange further meetings with Children’s Services, the Parks and Countryside department, the planning department and our local ward councillors to:
- find out why the school has been overlooked and will not be allocated any dedicated space
- see if we can change this before plans are submitted at the end of March
A meeting was initially arranged but Mr Roundtree and I were then asked not to attend (at the request of our local councillors) and I have now discovered that our local councillors then cancelled the meeting.
The park is planned to be an informal grassland area. As such, it is unlikely that our school will be able to make use of it for activities such as sports day or organised sports as we do now.
The governing body feel that the current proposals will be detrimental to our pupils. We ask you to join us in raising objections to the plans when they are submitted on the grounds that the school has lost access to private green space and our sports provision will be adversely impacted.
We are not asking for all the land. We fully support the provision of a public park. However, there is enough land available for the school to have some dedicated space and for there to be a park for the whole community to enjoy.