Down by the Riverside…
Last night the Bury Labour group took the words “summer recess” fully to heart and held an emergency council meeting on the subject of Radcliffe Riverside School. So I took off my beach wear and put my suit back on for the evening.
The original plans for a 900 place school for secondary age pupils have been pondered by the new(ish) Conservative adminstration, who had an idea about perhaps reducing the numbers to 600 and giving the remaining space over to a primary school.
This idea was mentioned publicly, and obviously panicked a lot of people. However, it appeared that the “idea” was not a fully formed proposal, so lots of the questions about governance of the school(s) and altrnative uses for the building couldn’t be answered, much to the frustration of most of the people there. Of course it’s worrying to think of a school with pupils of 3 years old and pupils of 16 years old sharing the same facilities. But this mightn’t happen, and the whole debate was impossible to get to the bottom of.
Liberal Democrats believe that full consultation with parents and the community must take place before any decision on the use of the school is made. And we fully support the need for a brand new secondary school for Radcliffe. So last night we put an amendment to the motion, calling for the school to be built and for consultation to take place on its use. And the other parties followed our lead and voted with us. We still want a new school for Radcliffe opening in January 2009.
In Prestwich many of us have painful memories of the discussions when one of our local schools was threatened with closure a year ago (Prestwich Arts College on Heys Road). We said then that there should be a place in a Prestwich high school for every Prestwich child that wanted one, the same must be said for Radcliffe.
We got more questions than answers last night (and there ws plenty of time for both - the meeting went on for so long that I feared many Radcliffe children would have graduated university whilst the debate still raged in the Council chamber…), but guaranteed two important things - a new school for Radcliffe after years of delays, and full consultation on how it is used.
A successful night.
Rick
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