500 signatures reached
To: The Secretary of State for Education - Rt Hon Nicky Morgan MP, The Playing Fields Advisory Panel, RBKC Project Manager Guy Parks & RBKC Town Clerk Nicholas Holgate
STOP RBKC COUNCIL BUILDING ON MARLBOROUGH SCHOOL PLAYGROUND!
We urge the Secretary of State for Education NOT to grant consent to the Council's application for Disposal of Playing Fields (559m2 playground) belonging to Marlborough Primary School.
We urge the School Playing Fields Advisory Panel to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State for Education against granting consent to this application.
We object strongly to the Council's application for Disposal of Playing Fields in respect of Marlborough School.
We demand that Kensington & Chelsea Council WITHDRAW their Disposal of Playing Fields application and RETURN the playground to the school and school children.
Why is this important?
IMPORTANT: please email your views, including the words "I object" and your reasons why to [email protected] by 6th November 2015.
You can view the proposal here: www.rbkc.gov.uk/marlborough
Live footage of the Marlborough demolition here showing the playground in question: https://timelapse.regenology.co.uk/api/embedded/DYz/
The Council plans to build a 40,000 sq ft block of offices & shops plus public walkway on the children's playground and is applying to the Secretary of State for Education to dispose of this playground (termed "playing fields" in S77 of the School act)
We object strongly to 559 m2 of playground being disposed of as per RBKC's Council pre-application consultation letter of September 2015.
We object to the fact that pupils at Marlborough Primary School in years 1-6 will have to play on rooftop play areas because all their playGROUND has been taken! Only nursery and reception children will have a ground level play space, the minimum necessary to allow children to be dropped off and collected.
The Council's own advisory board, Architects Appraisal Panel warned that the commercial building compromised the new school and that it should be “substantially scaled back or, better still, removed altogether”.
Having reviewed the planning documents and reports, we believe that the decision to demolish the Victorian school building was taken directly in order to rebuild the new school on a smaller site, thus creating space for the commercial building – we do not agree that there was “surplus land” on the site.
We believe that the public walkway has been largely designed to take customers past the shops on the ground floor of the commercial building rather than from the necessity of a walkway here.
In the consultation letter, it is stated that the revenue from the commercial building will be used “to maintain council services across the borough” and does not fit in with the S77 government guidelines that money should be reinvested in school sports (priority), recreation or education facilities.
