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Future of Higher Bartle secondary school in doubt as plans for Ingol site unveiled

Posted on - 29th September, 2024 - 7:00am | Author - | Posted in - Education, Preston News, Redevelopment, Schools
Former Tulketh High site
Former Tulketh High site

A new Preston secondary school is set to be built in the same place a previous one operated until it was shut down more than 15 years ago.

Lancashire County Council has unveiled plans to create the new facility on the former Tulketh High site in Ingol. The authority first mooted the Tag Lane plot as the possible location for a 600-pupil secondary last year.

Since then, the crumbling building – which shut its gates in 2008 – has been demolished and cabinet members will next week be asked to give the green light to the proposal for a new school to rise up in the same spot.   If approved, it will open in September 2027.

Read more: Eldon Primary School’s last ditch effort to delay Ofsted report to protect staff was ignored

However, the move puts a question mark over the future of a site already reserved for a secondary school in Higher Bartle – part of the rapidly expanding North West Preston area – and has led to claims that the new facility is not being built where it is actually needed.

Meanwhile, the cabinet is also poised to give the go-ahead to a long-planned new primary school on the former Whittingham Hospital site.   Its initial capacity of 210 pupils, when it opens in September 2026, could later be expanded to 420.

However, there will be no decision on whether or when two other primary facilities for which land has been earmarked will ever be built – with the county council warning that the timing of those establishments needs to be “carefully considered”.

Liberal Democrat county councillor John Potter – in whose Preston West division the Tulketh High site sits – has accused the authority of planning to build the new secondary school “in the wrong place”.

“This confirms all the fears that the community and the Lib Dems have had for years, that Lancashire County Council were pushing this issue into the long grass – and now it’s come back to bite them.

“The whole area is going to suffer.  People who have moved in to North West Preston are not getting the school they were promised, while the residents near where Tulketh High used to be are now going to get masses of traffic and parking issues around a site that was never supposed to be a school again.

“The idea that the school in Higher Bartle will ever go ahead is now for the birds,” County Cllr Potter said.

Cabinet member for education and skills Jayne Rear has admitted that the former Tulketh High land “wasn’t our preferred option” for building a new secondary.

However, she added:  “It is the only site in this area where we have any realistic chance to deliver the places within the required timeframe.”

A report to be presented to a meeting of the cabinet next Thursday also refers to consideration of “overall cost to the authority” being taken into account.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service understands that any school built on the Higher Bartle site – just south of the M55 – would not have been ready to open until 2030, three years after the extra places are required.

The reason for the delay is not immediately apparent, as the land was reserved for exactly that purpose back in January 2022, when Preston City Council granted permission for a 320-home development by Bloor Homes and Taylor Wimpey, on a site east of Sandy Lane and west of Tabley Lane.

That was to fulfil the vision of the North West Preston Masterplan – a document drawn up in 2017 to guide the development of around 5,500 homes in that area over the course of the following 20 years – which set out indicative sites for a new secondary school and two new primaries in order to meet the demand that would be generated by the influx of new residents.

The county council carried out a public consultation early last year into the option of building a new school on the old Tulketh High, which was known as Tulketh Community Sports College by the time of its closure 16 years ago.

Fifty-seven percent of an unpublished number of respondents agreed with the plan, while a further 11 percent “tended to agree”. However, even amongst those supportive of the suggestion, around one in six believed that the intended location was “not ideal”.

Of the 30 percent who disagreed or tended to disagree with the proposal, the suggested site was a factor in the reason for their opposition.

Although described at the time as an “informal” consultation, cabinet members will be told next week that the Department for Education is satisfied that it remains “valid” more than 18 months after it was undertaken – suggesting a further survey of public opinion will not be deemed necessary.

A separate consultation would have to be carried out in relation to the planning application that would have to be submitted before any building work could begin.

The primary question

It is almost four years since land was set aside for a new primary school as part of a 200-dwelling housing development approved on land north of Tabley Lane.

The Redrow Homes estate, given the green light by Preston City Council in November 2020, was to include a two-form entry primary facility that would be one of the two such establishments specified in the North West Preston Masterplan seven years ago – but which have yet to materialise.

Only this week, embryonic plans published for a 430-home development off Sidgreaves Lane in Cottam included space for the second of the proposed primary schools.

However, the school place planning report to be presented to county council cabinet members next week makes no mention of either site – nor of land at Cottam Hall, off Merry Trees Lane, which County Hall itself consulted upon as the possible location for a primary facility early last year.

The document acknowledges that pupil numbers are rising in the Preston Rural school planning area as a result of housing growth and the popularity of existing schools, which are combining to generate “a proportionate increase” in the number of parental preferences for admissions to schools in that location.

The area is being assessed for school place capacity and demand alongside Preston West and Preston North, because the increase in housing is expected to affect all three localities.

However, because of the proposed doubling in size, over the next seven years, of Goosnargh Oliverson’s Church of England Primary School, any further addition to capacity is being kept “under review” for now – to ensure that “the right level…is brought forward at the right time”.

A consultation into the Goosnargh Oliverson’s expansion runs until 13th October.

Expansions of several other primary schools to the north and west of Preston have been approved by the county council in recent years.

No time to waste

Cabinet member for education and skills Jayne Rear said of the new school plans on which she and her colleagues will make a decision next week:

“These are ambitious proposals that will deliver hundreds of new school places in the Preston area.

“We have pored over the consultation responses and forensically looked at the plans and considered all our options.

“The Tulketh site wasn’t our preferred option for a new secondary school but is the only site in this area where we have any realistic chance to deliver the places within the required timeframe.

“It is imperative that we do not delay and the proposals we are moving forward with will ensure we deliver on our promise to provide the right number of school places, in the right areas, at the right time to meet need.

“Should cabinet agree to move forward with these plans, we will ensure to work [with] and listen to our communities as we navigate the design and planning stages.”

The only way is an academy

Government legislation means both the new secondary school in Ingol and the new primary in Whittingham would have to be established as academies or free schools.  Although they would be constructed by – and at cost to – the county council, the facilities would be operated by an academy trust or free school sponsor.

The government will ultimately determine the organisation that runs the new establishments, but Lancashire County Council will set the school specification against which they will be judged.

The authority says it also has a “critical role to play in operating the assessment and selection process” which see cabinet members recommend a particular operator to the Education Secretary.

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