Councillors to discuss plans to expand six Bath and north east Somerset primary schools

“Oh, I expect we will hear the webcasts.....but all speaking faces will be blurred....”

“As WASPS is an excellent school I was wondering if children from out of the area are attending ? How can you not expect two extra classes when parents usually register well in advance ? As to additional housing the mind boggles where they are supposed to go in Weston ....

Regarding the webcast I suspect there will be times they 'forget' to turn their microphones on ;)”

“I'm bemused to recent the other news item today about the Council starting a webcast of its meetings, with Councillor Paul Crossley quoted as saying "The Cabinet wants to make democracy more accessible to all......we want to engage them in the decisions which are made". This seems to be a classic case of 'left hand/right hand'.

What I find particularly unsettling about the WASPS case is that it has arisen, not because of some mistake/ovesight, but apparently a DELIBERATE decision by BANES not to inform local residents. Not only that, but they will not own up to who made that decision and why.

I do not think that it needed a statistical genius to realise that, simply replacing an old building with a new one, was not by itself going to cater for what is clearly a rising population and birth-rate. And once all these 'new' pupils reach secondary school age, what then?







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“Not sure whether they got it wrong as such, but they'd certainly added 2 temporary classrooms before the new building was even completed, let alone officially opened! The continued chopping and changing is inevitably disruptive despite the excellent staff's best efforts. Even now the dining capacity is insufficient so some kids have to take their lunch (including hot dinners) back to their classrooms to eat - this is because the planned capacity didn't expect the 2 additional classes. With these new proposals a further class will be added with no further expansion in dining capacity until the later phase brings another entire new building onto the site.

Even now, there are rumours as to what the revised Core Strategy might mean for Weston in terms of additional housing, which if true would make these proposals likely to be insufficient as well. Obviously until the revised Core Strategy is published we won't know how joined up the thinking is, but I'm not that confident!”

“I thought it puzzling that there was a lack of response to these proposals ! Now I know why ... also why does WASPS need enlarging after the recent new build, did they get it wrong ?”

“That'll be the public consultation which finished on the 3rd Feb, and by mid way through the 5th (less than 12 working hours later) the consultation results were typed up and included in a recommendation to proceed. I think we can probably guess how much anyone stopped to consider anything said in response so if you missed your chance to be ignored - don't feel too bad!

We apparently get another consultation period once they've decided to proceed.”

“"It follows a public consultation, where the majority of people were happy with the expansions....."

Yet in the case of WASPS at least, the Council made a deliberate decision NOT to inform local residents about the proposal, nor about the so-called 'public' drop-in meetings held at the school. One of the local councillors passed on the details, but too late for those who were interested to attend the meetings, and nothing has been heard at all from the other councillor.

Is this local democracy in action?”