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Dulwich Hospital Spare Land RELEASED

A year ago I submitted a Right to Contest the spare land at the Dulwich Hospital site. This right was created by Lib Dems in the coalition government.

Please see the letter from the Rt Hon Francis Maude MP – Minister for the Cabinet Office – NMP625917

I’m delighted at last to report that as a direct result of my request the spare land has now been added to the Register of Surplus Public Land. This is a key pre requisite for any new use such as new schools.

NHS property have held back 11,300m3 of the 28,300m2 for the new health centre. So I will check whether more than the 17,000m2 can be released at this point. In public meeting they’ve said they’ll only need 7,000-9,000m2 for the new health centre. I suspect they’re being ultra cautious.

Patience is a virtue I have little of but I’m delighted that all the chasing by myself and Lib Dem colleagues at all levels of local, regional and national government and the support of the Cabinet Office has been successful.

This prepares the ground for the Educational Finance Agency to tell us its decision of whether they’ve selected either The Charter School or Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation to open a new secondary school for us and have a site to house it in.

School Admissions and Congestion

The biggest industry and businesses in the Dulwich area are in education. Not just the required schools for local children  – the 3 out of the 4 state secondary school or 11 infant and primary schools but also the private schools – 3 secondary schools and 5 infant and primary schools. (Kingsdale with it lottery admissions is no longer a genuinely local school).

These private schools and Kingsdale do attract many local children but they also have huge catchment areas. They support a private school bus network required to support such hugely expanded schools. And their expansion has been marked over the years.

I don’t blame the parents or children coming so far. We have great local schools but with so many now coming from so far it is contributing to serious local congestion.

The irony of those private schools being the core of a the Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Route to School group while contributing so much to the congestion this worthy group wish to reduce won’t be lost on local residents. This group is now supporting measures to limit local junctions to try and reduce local congestion.

Southwark Council needs to find ways to reduce these attractive schools catchment areas and the congestion large catchment areas is causing.

I Southwark Council will use the planning process to impose new admissions conditions to further this aim.

This would be the route to minimising congestion and the harm and danger this causes local school pupils

Do you agree?

David Laws Letter

Last year we formally launched our campaign for a new local secondary school. We’ve been so successful that over 750 families have signed up to give there support and two school providers have applied to open it – Haberdashers’ and Charter.

But the same thorny issue could potentially scupper the brilliant school we all want – a site.

The obvious site is the Dulwich Hospital site where more extensive replacement health facilities only need around a third of the site. The remaining two-thirds would be ideal for our secondary school.

But we’ve hit two snags. By far the largest is Southwark Council are refusing to re zone the site and no longer insist on lots of housing. The second snag is Southwark Council won’t zone a site for one of the two Harris primary schools for the area – we’ve even suggested sites to them.

Bizarrely Southwark Council are refusing to help. It means the land for the secondary school would cost far more than £64M. NO government is going to spend so much on land for a single school however much it is required and desired.

To try and break this deadlock Cllr Rosie Shimell and I have written to Minister of State David Laws. We’re asking for his help and advice to get Southwark Council to actually do something to make our secondary school financially viable to be built on the amount of space we all desire.

Letter to David Laws 17 October 2014

Ensuring Proper Dulwich School Provision

Southwark Council is about to embark on the journey towards a new Southwark Plan.

We have three local problems around the planning designation we need to resolve to ensure proper state school provision in the Dulwich area.

I have formally requested the councillor Cabinet member for Regeneration who is responsible for this mark.williams@southwark.gov.uk please let him know if you agree with me and copy me. Without these changes we will not have enough primary or secondary places in the right cirumstances and places:

1. Dulwich Hospital. After new health care provision that the remainder of the site, circa 18,000-20,000m2, be allocated for a new secondary school. Without such a planning designation change the government DfE will be unable to afford this much land as the cost would be more than £60m. (The East Dulwich Police station was sold for £6M and is 1/10th of the space because it wasn’t in planning terms protected as a site for eudcational use).

2. 520 Lordship Lane (former Harvester pub) That this be designated for education use. This would enable the Harris Primary school looking for a home to be placed there. Without this it seems likely that the new Harris Primary school will be placed at the Dulwich Hospital site OR they will apply to build on the East Dulwich Harris Girls Academy Metropolitan Open Land. Both of these options are much less desirable than 520 Lordship Lane.

3. 62-68 Half Moon Lane. The Dulwich Estate carved the absolute minimum space from the former Kings Biological Sciences centre for the Judith Kerr Bilingual Free School that opened 2013. Effectively they provided the main building and a tiny tiny playground – fencing off most of the site for future residential use. The lease includes a condition that the school must never talk about the minimal space leased to them. Ideally the whole site would be designated for educational use helping to push the Dulwich Estate towards being more charitable and the whole site being made available for the Judith Kerr Bilingual School. Effectively the Dulwich Estate have carved 2/3rds of the site for future residential building so that they provide more subsidy for private schools more over the state provided free school pupils having reasonable outside space.

To see the full email comunications – Dulwich Education Planning Status Request Email 26 August 2014

What other planning designations do we need changed?

2006 Six To Fix

After the recent elections I was going through lots of old papers in post election clean-up. I cam across lots of stuff from when I first stood as a councillor in 2005/2006 with Richard Thomas and Jonathan Mitchell.

We stood on a promise to fix the following six things:

1. New secondary – East Dulwich Harris Boys Academy – OPENED

2. Modernise all street lighting – COMPLETED

3. Longer opening hours – Dulwich Library opened on Wednesdays making it open 7 days a week – COMPLETED

4. Modernise the Dulwich Leisure Centre – COMPLETED

5. Fight to keep East Dulwich surburban and not redesignated as urban – COMPLETED

6. Campaign to keep East Dulwich Police station – SUCCESSFUL 2006-2010 (but since closed by Boris in 2013).

We were hugely successful in getting them all done at the time. Boy did it take a lot of work but making the area is why I was persuaded to enter local politics.

Time to say thank you.

Officially, councillors stay in office for a few days after the election. But I wanted to say a few thank you’s on the last ‘real’ day of my term of office. Hopefully I will still be a local councillor  after tomorrow, but that is up to the voters.

I could go on longer than an Oscar ceremony speech, but I will keep it short and sweet.

Thank you to my ward colleagues Cllr Jonathan Mitchell and Cllr Rosie Shimell who make great team members – we each play to our strengths and without them I would not get so much done for East Dulwich. But we also have a big team who help us leaflet, call people, run stalls at events, etc. But also our families that make it possible for us to devote quite so much time to councillor work. Thank you.

Big thanks to everyone who has supported our campaigns over the last four years. The bigger one’s being for a new primary school, trying to save our Police station, 20mph on Lordship Lane, new cinema, new crossings, North Cross Road market and the new secondary school. Thank you.

Beverley Olamijulo and Fiztroy Williams who run the Dulwich Community Council so well. Sadly no longer as often as we’d like. Sonia Watson and her colleagues for all her sage planning wisdom. Many officers in departments from parking Tim Walker, to waste Ian Smith, Community Safety Jonathon Toy, and so many others have been brilliant. Council Housing still feels chaotic despite the stirling efforts of people like Gabriella Usuanlele. Thank you for helping us solve so much casework over the last four years.

We’ve also had a lot of fun making positive changes happen to East Dulwich via the Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding organised so very capably by Andrea Allen and her team. Thank you.

The business group South Southwark Business Association have been good critical friends. We’ve made much progress but agree we need to do more to help if re elected. Thank you for your patience.

The local Police team led by Stewart Turnbull. Thank you for responding so positively to all our enquiries and efforts for more crime prevention. I’m sorry we’ll never be happy until crime is almost zero.

Lastly thank you to all those residents who trusted us with there votes in 2006 and 2010. I hope we’ve not disappointed you.

 

Introducing Haberdashers’ to East Dulwich

Today at the Dulwich Festival Fair on Goose Green we had the opportunity to for Haberdasher’s Aske’s to further introduce themselves to the families of East Dulwich. Haberdashers’ are our preferred school provider for a new East Dulwich Secondary School.

It felt a huge success with lots of positive interest. Thank you to everyone who made it possible today and everyone who stopped to say hi. I was amazed at how many people didn’t know about the campaign. Boy have we tried to let people know about it!

Goose GreenThe Charter School was also present seeking further support for their version of providing a new local secondary. To think 6 weeks ago Southwark Council said not over their dead body and we didn’t have any school providers interested and now we have two outstanding ones interested. How cool is that!

If you’d like to support our campaign please visit www.newschool.org.uk

AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT.

School campaign at Goose Green Fair

This coming Sunday 11 May is the Dulwich Festival Goose Green Fair from 11am to 430pm.

The East Dulwich Secondary School Campaign will have a gazebo there. The campaign steering group will be there along with Habderdashers’ Aske’s Federation staff and some of their year 9 prefects as ambassadors.

I really hope you can come along and say hi, ask searching questions about what we and Haberdashers are proposing, and how that fits with your expectations for a great new school to join the area’s other great schools.

And if anyone can help us make this happen please do get in touch. We can never have too much help. Even just helping blow up balloons from 10am!

PS. We now have over 550 supporting families for our new East Dulwich secondary school. If you know anyone who would like to support our campaign they can sign up here.

Pupil Premium rise this month

Liberal Democrats in government have really focused on providing the Pupil Premium for schools to help ensure that more pupils are able to achieve higher standards. Earlier this month it rose to become £1,300 per pupil.

The Pupil Premium provides schools with extra money to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This will help whole classes move forward faster together.

It has been increased to £1,300 per eligible primary school pupil in 2014/15, up from £900 per child last year. That’s likely to be an extra £734,500 for primary schools in East Dulwich.

East Dulwich ward
Goodrich Community Primary School 302 £392,600
Goose Green Primary School 144 £187,200
Heber Primary School 74 £96,200
St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School 45 £58,500
Ward total 565 £734,500

Schools will be able to spend this money in ways that they feel helps their pupils best. Evidence shows some schools use it to hire extra staff, reading and maths classes for children who need extra support or provide better IT facilities.

It should help ensure more localprimary children are ready for senior school. All the evidence shows that if your child starts behind in secondary school, they stay behind. That is unacceptable.

As part of the Lib Dems aim to build a fairer society, the Coalition Government is putting extra money into primary schools to help teachers support disadvantaged children. This has to be a good thing.

How is your child’s school using its Pupil Premium money?

Haberdasher’s Aske’s East Dulwich College

I’m delighted to announced the new Haberdasher’s Aske’s East Dulwich College.

The East Dulwich Lib Dem councillors initiated a campaign in 2013 for a new co-ed non-faith secondary free school. This followed their experiences helping to avert the pending primary school places crisis by leading a successful campaign for new local primary schools. It was also informed by casework from distraught local families being offered secondary school places outside the area – places like Catford, New Cross, Walworth. It became clear that a new local secondary school was urgently needed to meet local demand and no later than September 2016. We even brought education minister David Laws MP to East Dulwich to discuss the problem last July.

When we met Southwark Council officials they were clear that no new school was required expecting local kids to travel across London for places and that they would contest any new school we campaigned for. Ouch!

After many months of us leafleting and canvassing homes, schools, street stalls, online we found more than enough support for our campaign and a new free school application to be made. We’d proved the officials wrong. We then moved onto finding a  great school provider. For this we initiated a Parents Steering Group which successfully took on this task and also helped increase the numbers of supporting families. We’ve now reached 454 supporting families.  Working with this group, who have met four times and with us visited various local schools on fact finding trips, and after considerable deliberations, a unanimous decision to work with Haberdashers’ Aske Federation was taken. Haberdashers’  have now announced that their governing body has approved taking this project further. They plan to model a new Haberdashers’ Aske’s East Dulwich College (secondary school) on their outstandingly successful Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College. The school would be for around 180pupils per year group include a sixth form  and open September 2016.

To further support this project East Dulwich Liberal Democrats in February submitted a Right to Contest application, using legislation created by Liberal Democrats in government. The application is about freeing up the two-thirds of the Dulwich Hospital site which has remained unoccupied for over 20 years. The Parents Steering committee agree with us that this space represents the minimum space for our new secondary school.

We look forward to continue working with Haberdashers to support them submitting a free school application November 2014. We still welcome further support via our website www.newschool.org.uk or email us directly cllrjamesbarber@gmail.com

We also welcome the support both Southwark Labour and Conservatives have now given to this project and that officers have now confirmed a new school is needed.

Councillor James barber ” it has been a long journey to reach this stage but I’m truly delighted to bring on board such a prestigious and renowned school provider as Haberdashers’ Aske’s and to model our new school on their Hatcham College”.

Councillor Rosie Shimell added “having denied any need for a new secondary school its great that Lib Dems have won the argument and Southwark Labour are now saying they support our campaign. We just need to see them practically support it now”.

COuncillor Jonathan Mitchell also said “I’ve slogged my guts out canvassing for support for our idea of a new secondary school. So I delighted all our hard work has born fruit attracting such a great school provider to our area who will complement all our existing outstanding schools”.