Arborfield Garrison Resident Action Group's posterous

Arborfield Garrison-Residents' Action Group (AG-RAG) has questioned the need for The Emmbrook School to move to the south of the borough.

The group says relocating The Emmbrook to Arborfield Garrison as part of housing plans should be scrapped because of a lack of funding and uncertainty over housing numbers.

Martin Rutter, chairman of AG-RAG, said: “With the Government ruling out any central funding and the council clearly strapped for cash, now is the time for it to drop this proposal and consider better alternatives. We shall challenge them on where they intend to get the money to contribute to the estimated £39 million needed for the school.”

Councillor Rob Stanton, executive member for children’s services, said even if the council reduced the housing numbers, it would still need a school in the south of the borough.

He added Ryeish Green School in Spencers Wood, which closes at the end of this term, was not in a suitable location.

The Government has scrapped the Building Schools for the Future funding for rebuilding schools, however Cllr Stanton said the borough was unlikely to see any more of this money anyway as it was second to last on the waiting list.

He said money for a new school at Arborfield Garrison would mostly come from developer contributions.

The front page boxout from the current edition of the Wokingham Times.

A Spencers Wood school will shut its doors for good this week after council bosses controversially agreed to close the facility more than three years ago.

Lewis Rudd spoke with the school’s departing headteacher to find out how morale is within the camp while learning that many are still upset at the decision to bring 100 years of teaching at the school to an end.

Staff at a soon-to-be-closed Wokingham school are still angry with education bosses who took the decision to close the school more than three years ago, the headteacher has said.

Jenny Garner has told The Wokingham Times how she also believes bosses at Wokingham Borough Council will one day “live to regret” taking the decision to close Ryeish Green School in Hyde End Lane.

At the end of the current term, on Thursday,  the secondary school will cease all educational operations after the Conservative-controlled authority unanimously approved closing the school back in May 2007.

The then-executive committee took the decision to close the school after failing to grant it trust status, meaning those 16-year-olds leaving to seek further education or employment this year will be its last.

The school, which has been at the site since April 1910, also failed to tie up a similar trust status through a working partnership with the educational charity CfBT.

Mrs Garner, however, still stands by her remarks the school has been closed for political reasons rather than educational ones.

She also believes the council may have missed the opportunity to keep the school open as one of its four strategic development locations earmarked within the Core Strategy document sits in close proximity to Ryeish.

Should plans to build thousands of homes in the area go ahead the catchment area may well point in the direction of the school planned for a similar development at Arborfield Garrison, although she questions if it will ever be built, given the current economic climate.

The headteacher, who has kept watch over the school for the past nine years, also refuses to talk about the school in the past tense.

“We haven’t finished yet,” she said.

“Staff morale is still very good and the students remain very focused, and we still have the GCSE presentation evening in October to look forward to.

“The staff are still very angry, though, at the council’s decision  because we didn’t want them to close the school, which I believe is more for a political reason rather than for educational ones.

“But we have been living with this decision for three years now and we have worked really hard to see it through.

“We won’t be going out as a failed school.”

Mrs Garner went on to say how the majority of her teaching staff had gone on to successfully find recruitment at schools elsewhere, while others are still looking.

Since the decision was taken to close the school and its last round of new admissions being welcomed in September 2008, the younger pupils have slowly been filtered out to other secondary schools in the Wokingham borough.

The last batch of these, its Year Nine pupils, left the school at the turn of the year – leaving just the remaining Year 11 pupils to see out the full five year cycle and concentrate on their GCSE examinations.

When leaving the school, however, Mrs Garner will also be walking out on a 38-year career in teaching – as she plans to retire and “play golf” once she completes a part-time job with the authority working in a role with apprenticeships.

She said: “I plan to retire and play golf. I started teaching in 1972 and have spent the last nine years at Ryeish and loved it.

“I think people are going to be generally and pleasantly surprised by our results this year and this summer we will be going out on a high, rather than going out as a failing school.

“We have already got some students up to seven GCSEs or more and we are going to get more this time around.

“We were also the first school to enter our students early into exams in Wokingham – which is in line with our vocational objections.

“We have always been a innovative school. This decision is one Wokingham Borough Council may well in due course come to regret.”

The then executive at Wokingham Borough Council unanimously backed the closure plans in May 2007 after a consultation process was launched following concerns about the lack of children making the step up to the school.

Falling pupil numbers sparked the consultation after just 91 pupils out of a possible 210 capacity were enrolled at the school in one academic year.

An interview with the head of Ryeish Green School due to close due to falling numbers despite being in the centre of the South of M4 SDL - Jenny Garner points towards the proposed school on the Arborfield SDL as the place where pupils would end up going.

Residents desperate to fight excessive development on green gaps are facing an uphill struggle as the long wait to revisit unpopular housing targets could take  months.

Wokingham Borough Council has finally received confirmation and detail of the coalition Government’s pledge to scrap the south east’s housing targets imposed by Labour.

The council has yet to announce its plans for exactly how it will revisit the numbers and if necessary amend its Core Strategy, which proposes where in the borough they will be built.

Councillor David Lee, leader of the council, said this week the council is moving quickly to decide how to proceed, however it had to have a five-year land supply in place for developers to build on or Wokingham would be vulnerable to inappropriate development.

The council is hampered in how fast it can move by the wait to find out if Arborfield Garrison will be released by the Ministry of Defence for housing and the complicated process of amending housing numbers and cash contributions for infrastructure from developers.

Cllr Lee said if the garrison is not available and the housing numbers remain the same, the council may have to look at alternative sites to meet housing demand in places such as Grazeley, which was among suggested sites for development.

Peter Must, chairman of the Wokingham Society, called on the council not to allow developers to exploit a “loophole” while Wokingham waits to revisit the housing numbers.

Planning applications based on the council’s blueprint for the 12,500 homes it was told to build by 2026 have already been submitted.

The University of Reading last week lodged plans for 1,200 homes, a new business centre, primary school and Eastern Relief Road to carry through-traffic on the A327 corridor to the east of Shinfield, taking traffic away from the village and the existing A327 Black Boy roundabout of the M4.

Local people can now have a say on the plans, however Shinfield Parish Council has expressed deep concerns about the erosion of green gaps around its village caused by the new housing.

A spokesman for the University of Reading said: “The University of Reading has submitted planning applications for new homes and associated infrastructure in Shinfield, in line with Wokingham Borough’s Core Strategy. Regardless of changes to the national policy on housing, there is still a large housing shortfall in the area. Our proposed scheme has been methodically prepared to play a key role in helping the borough deliver a part of this housing need with a high quality development.”

Next Wednesday, the council’s planning committee will meet to discuss a plan for 357 homes to the north of Wokingham town between Norreys and the A329M.

Wokingham Town Council and the Wokingham Society have called for the council to reject the proposal from Crest Nicholson because it fails to offer firm plans for a northern relief road linking the site with London Road or a link with the A329M to divert traffic away from the town centre.

Mr Must said: “We hope there won’t be developers going it alone trying to get in through this gap between one plan and a new plan.”

Mr Must said the Wokingham Society’s principle concern has always been infrastructure to cope with the new homes and the group wants the council to ensure changes to housing numbers do not mean Wokingham loses out on investment in its roads and other areas.

John Redwood, MP for Wokingham, has sent Wokingham council suggested policies to use when revisiting the Core Strategy.

These include defending green gaps between settlements and on the green belt, not building on the floodplain, not building without having infrastructure cash in the bank or guaranteed, and revisiting housing demand.

The council will not find out if the garrison is available until the autumn, leaving the council with a potential wait of six months to finalise a new housing target and plans for how infrastructure will be paid for.

Cllr Angus Ross, executive member for local and regional planning, said: “We are delighted with the clarity that the letter from Eric Pickles [secretary of state for communities and local government] has given to councils and that will help us come to what I hope will be an early decision of how we move one with housing numbers.”

Cllr Ross said all options are open in the potential revision of the Core Strategy and consultation of residents will be involved.

Bracknell Forest has proposed dropping 2,000 homes from its 12,500 homes target following the announcement from Eric Pickles last week firming up the new powers for councils to set housing targets.

The front page story from the current Wokingham Times - AG-RAG comment featured in a boxout on the page yet to be published online.