As announced in the pages of your newspaper a little while ago, Sutton Council is planning to build a new secondary school on the site of Sutton Hospital after it finally closes sometime next year.
The council were hoping to acquire 7.6 hectares of land and the school was to go on part of the land with an entrance off Cotswold Road.
However, the NHS has only decided to release a small parcel of land totalling 1.6 hectares in area, basically the main building which you can see from Chiltern Road and the land in front of it.
The council has stated it needs two hectares for the size of the school it wants built.
There is a tender process whereby surplus land is released for tender by the NHS first to public bodies, eg Sutton Council which lasts six weeks, and then it will go to open tender. The six-week period expires on December 12.
Even though the site is too small, the council is persisting with its plans to buy the land.
Basing their plans on Overton Grange School, they are planning to add an extra storey to squeeze 1,700 pupils into the school.
The school will have a very small playground, no car parking.
It will be built right up to the fence and therefore there will be no attempt at landscaping the site.
It will therefore seriously detract from what is currently a pleasant residential area.
If the council is successful, it will have to pay market price for the land which will be determined by a valuation process.
Then they will give it to a free school or academy that will receive outside funding to build and run the school.
We are being told the council must make cuts amounting to £40m over five years, yet they are prepared to squander a large sum on buying the site but they will not finish up with any asset.
A school on the Sutton Hospital site will be about half-a-mile from the borough boundary, therefore, at least 50 per cent of the pupils will come from outside the borough.
Sutton Council are unable to dictate the intake policy of either a free school or an academy.
A school is needed in the north of the borough yet the south is well catered for with Overton Grange and Stanley Park schools as the housing density is much less than in the north.
Come on Sutton Council, please think before you squander our money on what will turn out to be a total white elephant. The residents would prefer the site to be used for a health centre, but who takes notice of the residents?
ALAN TRICKEY Chiltern Road, Sutton
- Send your letters to: letters@suttonguardian.co.uk
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