Sutton Council announced that it had purchased part of the Sutton Hospital site for £7,863,000 for the purpose of building a secondary school.

By its location this school will be primarily for children from outside the borough, especially for those whose parents do not want their kids to go to the Beacon School in Banstead. It will do little to relieve the shortage of school places in the centre and north of the borough.

Sutton Hospital had an excellent eye clinic, a popular and wellused outpatients department which also provided blood tests, x-rays and other services not only to the people of South Sutton and Belmont, but to the people of Cheam Banstead, Ewell and beyond.

The services provided were appreciated by all. These facilities have been whittled away and will soon be totally gone, and the people of Belmont, Cheam, Carshalton Beeches, South Sutton and Banstead will have to go to St Helier or Epsom Hospitals for their treatment.

Did our MPs, Paul Burstow and Tom Brake stand up and campaign to keep the hospital open?

No. They are only interested in St Helier and the greater kudos saving the accident and emergency and maternity departments might bring them.

Our MPs have let us down: our council has let us down.

In its spin, Sutton Council claims: “The ambition is to work with the school sponsor to develop the curriculum with a concentration on the life sciences – creating a ladder of opportunity for students.”

As a parent of a girl who moved on to secondary school last September, sending her to a school specialising in life sciences is the last thing on the minds of both my wife and myself and most other parents of a 10 or 11- year-old child.

If one’s child is really bright, one would like that child to go to one of the borough’s five grammar schools, otherwise it is the facilities that are key – sports, music, English, mathematics, languages and the sciences – and, of course the reputation of the school.

I am told there is a far more suitable site in the north of the borough – the derelict all-weather football pitch in St Helier Park.

Can we not forget about party political point-scoring and select a site which is more suitable for the children of Sutton?

ALAN TRICKEY
Chiltern Road, Sutton