Sunday, January 22, 2006

Civil Service Sports Ground - a new school?


I have written a letter to residents living around the Civil Service Sports Ground, concerning a innvotative proposals to look at having an all through School on the land.

I have reproduced my letter below. Please feel free to leave a comment on this site if you have views. If you leave your name and details then I can ensure that comments are forwarded onto the Council.


Dear Sir or Madam

Civil Service Sports Ground
I am writing in my capacity as a Freemantle ward Councillor on the subject of the Civil Service Sports Ground.
As you are perhaps aware the land has been acquired by Bovis Homes, a property developer, who are likely to seek to develop the land for residential purposes in the near future.
There is a strong feeling in the community, which I support, that the land should be kept as green space with access for the local community.

Learning Futures
The Council is currently undergoing a review of secondary school provision in Southampton, which it calls Learning Futures. This is accompanied a wide-ranging consultation with parents.
The Council is looking at creating a network of Learning Campuses. The aim is for these to be of sufficient size to be financially viable for the long term and for them to meet the needs of communities, be responsive to local priorities and be accessible to all.
The Council will be sending the parents of school children an explanatory booklet and feedback form next week.
There is a suggestion which has been discussed informally but which does not form part of the proposals, but which could very well feature in the consultation if raised by members of the community.
The idea, which has been raised, is the possibility of re-providing a new secondary school accommodation for both St Mark's Primary School and Regents Park Community College on a site comprising the current St Mark's site and the land known as the Civil Service Sports Ground.

The advantages of this idea include:
1) It is a means of providing better accommodation for two schools: including securing playing field provision for Regents Park which currently has none.
2) It would be a way of developing the "campus" concept bringing primary and secondary education together on one site in some form of strong partnership.
3) It would preserve at least a significant proportion of the Civil Service sports ground, thereby potentially satisfying local concerns about it’s redevelopment for housing.

The potential problems include:
1) No costings have been looked at, at this stage.
2) No detailed feasibility work done on how a building could be situated on the available land.
3) The agreement of a significant number of partners would be required, some of whom have not yet been involved in any formal discussions on the matter.

Find out more or make your views known
If you have views on this or are interested in learning more you can do a number of things:
1) Get in touch with me or one of your other Freemantle Councillors.
2) Make a comment on the feedback form on the Council’s Learning Futures consultation leaflet.
3) Write to the Council: Learning Futures Response Desk, Children’s Services and Learning, 4th Floor, Frobisher House, Nelson Gate, Southampton, SO15 1BZ or email
learning.futures@southampton.gov.uk.
4) Contact the Freemantle and Shirley Community Association.
5) Go to one of the Learning Futures public meetings, the first of which is at Taunton’s College, Hill Lane on Tuesday 7th February between 7:30pm and 9pm.

Yours faithfully


Jeremy Moulton
Councillor For Freemantle Ward
councillor.j.moulton@southampton.gov.uk
http://www.jeremymoulton.blogspot.com/

cc Cllr Brian Parnell, Cllr Michael Ball, Andrew Hind, Southampton City Council, St Mark’s School, Freemantle and Shirley Community Association

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a community sports facility and should be kept by the community giving it to a school is still destroying playing fields. any building is bad the fields are green and should be kept green
no no no to any development

Anonymous said...

This is a valuable green space in a very built up area, it should be kept as a facility for the community and not built over. It should be a community sports facility not a facility totally for the benefit of the schools. This land is also very innaccessible and providing access for a school and large amount of housing on the land will be very detrimental to the surrounding roads.

Anonymous said...

This is a valuable green space in a very built up urban area, it is needed by the community and should not be built over, or have access restricted to use by the school. This area needs to be retained for the use of the local community.
Any development on this land will also create a lot of problems as there is very limited access to the land.
Dont build over this land!