Our concerns
Location
The Council says ‘Public transport links to the site are already very good and will be improved much over the next few years’.
The Council's own figures show that 90% of students currently get to school by bus, bike or on foot. Getting to the proposed site will be more complicated for almost all students: there are no safe walking or cycling routes to the proposed site, and students will have to negotiate the A102M and construction traffic.
Those who use cars or public transport will be travelling with the flow of rush-hour traffic in an area of the borough already heavily congested.
From the experience of parents of pupils at the Millennium Primary School on the Peninsula the traffic system poses real dangers.
The Council says ‘the school will both contribute to, and draw significant benefits from, the regeneration of the Greenwich Peninsula’.
There is no residential housing planned for at least another 10 years.
The school will be isolated on a construction wasteland for that time … is that really a safe environment for young people?
The school is being used as an anchor and inducement for future developments on the Peninsula.
The Council says ‘the school will be well placed to continue serving its existing catchment area’.
The Council will have to introduce a special catchment area to ensure this.
Currently the John Roan School sits at the centre of its catchment area. Under these proposals it will be relocated to its most northern point.
The John Roan School is the only non-selective secondary school in this part of Greenwich.
Size of the site
The Council says ‘Neither of the two existing sites is large enough to accommodate the whole school and meet the vision for its future’.
The existing sites have an area of 26,000 sq metres for 1,200 students; the new site has an area of 7,000 sq metres for 1,600 students.
One of the existing sites is 15,000 sq metres – more than twice the footprint of the proposed site and very nearly equivalent to the total internal and external area of the proposed new building (15,410 sq metres).
Greenwich Council asked for 13,000 sq metres the developers offered 2,000 sq metres and the Council settled for 7,000 sq metres.
There has never been a planning brief undertaken on the existing sites.
The Council says ‘The new school building will comply to the BB98 guidelines’.
The site is so small that the building has been designed to meet the absolute minimum guidelines for a new school.
In certain areas the proposed building falls well below the minimum requirements.
The Millennium Primary School on the Peninsula is over twice the size of the proposed John Roan site, and it has only 400 pupils.
The Council says ‘The school will be designed to have external sports, recreation and play areas at both ground floor level and through making imaginative use of extensive roof-top spaces’.
The recreation spaces on the ground floor are designated only for post-16 and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) provision and are not available to 70% of students. The total space available for recreation and association is well below BB98 minimum guidelines.
The standard play area recommended for 1,600 students is 8,000 sq metres; the minimum play area recommended for 1,600 students is 6,000 sq metres; the proposed design provides total play areas of just over 4,000 sq metres split across three floors.
The ‘extensive’ roof-top space provides an area of only 500 sq metres (a little larger than a fenced tennis court).
The Council says ‘It will retain access to its large playing fields in Kidbrooke and also benefit from other parks and multi-use games facilities to be provided on the Greenwich Peninsula’.
The playing fields are owned by the John Roan Foundation, which is still in consultation about the move.
The other facilities are only proposals and access for the school has not been agreed.
These facilities are off-site and contradict claims that the move will provide a ‘single integrated site’.
Pollution and congestion
The Council says ‘air quality on the Peninsula is no worse than prevails in the Greenwich area generally’.
We have asked, on many occasions in the last six months, to see specific and comparative readings for air quality and noise levels at the existing and proposed sites. We have still not received a response.
The proposed plans include an air filtration system, because air and noise quality is so poor.
Fumes from industries in the surrounding area (a refinery, chemical works and dog-food factory) will be a constant irritation.
The Council says that the site is ‘close to the A102 but that would not make it unique in Greenwich or elsewhere in London in terms of proximity of home and schools to busy major roads’.
The current sites are highly valuable precisely because of their location away from major roads and near one of the best parks in London. The school has been grafted on to one of the smallest and worst sites on the Peninsula.
The A102M runs beside the proposed site. The A102M is one of the busiest roads in London.
Catchment area
The Council says ‘pupils [would be] travelling to the school from the catchment of the current site in Maze Hill. As the area around the new school is developed and the new residents move in, the new John Roan School will gradually change its catchment area to the local vicinity.’
In a recent meeting held at the John Roan School, a representative from the developers announced that they had always planned a school on the proposed site but had not intended to open it before 2018; it was always intended to serve the needs of the Peninsula community.
In its planning application, the Council said that the school would take 1,315 students from the Peninsula, leaving 285 places for students from the existing catchment areas.
The local MP, Nick Raynsford, has said that students from the existing catchment area will in future have to find places at Thomas Tallis or Kidbrooke.
Complete confusion surrounds the estimates for student population from the Peninsula; all that’s clear is that there will be far fewer places available to students from the current catchment area.
The absence of any contingency plan
The governing body has given its agreement ‘in principle’ to the move, while identifying ‘a number of issues which must be addressed to ensure both the safety and the success of our future school’.
We have asked the governing body on several occasions what their position will be if these issues are not addressed; we have not had a response.
The Council has said on a number of occasions that ‘the move will go ahead only if the John Roan Foundation and the governing body support the move’.
They have not set out what will happen if these two bodies do not support the move.
The Council has said ‘the school proposal will only go ahead if these issues can be satisfactorily resolved’.
We have asked for details of a contingency plan for the school if this does not happen, but have so far been given nothing.
Consultation process
The Council says ‘the Governing Body and the John Roan Foundation support the move’.
The John Roan Foundation owns the Maze Hill site and the playing fields. It has not yet given its support to the move.
The governing body has given its agreement to the move in principle only, and only if a number of conditions are met. Despite this, the Council has already spent over £750,000 on designs for the proposed building.
The decision to move has not been made, even though the Council is continuing to behave as if it has.
The Council says ‘it has long been the intention of the School and the Council to relocate the school’.
The fact of the move has been known for some time, but the size, location and nature of the site were only made public in October last year.
It is children now at primary school who will be most affected, and yet local primary schools have not been consulted.
Despite concerns raised by all stakeholders about the gas-holder, the planning application is going ahead.
The Council has publicly stated that it has no legal obligation to consult on the move and has no intention of doing so.
Key meetings have been held in closed session and important documents withheld from the press and public.
