Free school plan for 840 pupils

PLANS for a new 840-place school to accommodate Warrington’s first Free School – the King’s Leadership Academy – are to be considered by the borough council’s development management committee… amid a storm of controversy.
The proposals involve a 2.3 hectare site off Hillock Lane, Woolston – but they are opposed by Woolston Parish Council, a number of borough councillors and 23 members of the public.
But 78 people have given the scheme their backing, claiming there is a great demand for a high quality secondary school in the area – and that it will make Woolston a more desirable place to live.
The two-storey building is planned for the southern end of Woolston Park, to the north of Hillock Lane. It would become the permanent home of the Kings Leadership Academy, which is already operating in temporary accommodation at the former Longbarn Primary School.
When it opened last year, it had 38 pupils.
In addition to classrooms, a school hall, staff rooms, offices and meeting rooms, the new school building would have a library, gymnasium, artificial grass sports pitch, four curt sports hall, football pitch, and three junior sports pitches.
The plan is for the school to open for a longer day than other local schools – from 8.20am to 4.30pm – so as not to clash with the drop-off and pick-up times of the other schools.
Opponents of the development fear traffic and parking problems, loss of open space and playing fields, noise and disturbance, loss of privacy, wildlife habitats, etc.
The most outspoken opposition has come from borough councillor the Rev Steve Parish (pictured), who says: “It is a waste of public money to build a new high school in an area where, self-evidently, the number of pupils cannot sustain a high school without abstracting pupils from other high schools.
“The documentation from the applicant indicates a very limited catchment area, but also, in the transport plan, a diagram suggesting a wider “cycle catchment plan” that extends to include four other high schools in east Warrington.
“It is absolutely immoral for the Department for Education to be willing to fund a new and unnecessary school on ideological grounds but to delay provision of an urgently-needed new building for another school – one that largely serves areas of deprivation in inner Warrington.”
The proposed new school would take on 120 pupils aged 11-18 each year and would have 64 teachers and 32 non-teaching staff members.