Saturday, 9 August 2014

Swansea Council plan to sell off School Playing Fields

Swansea Council have been "honoured" by being given a place in the Rotten Boroughs  section of the latest issue of Private Eye.

its not a new story as it was reported in the "Beans on Toast"  a year ago.

"CASH incentives for Swansea schools to sell off land have been approved.
Cabinet members agreed to the scheme, which the council has said will benefit pupils across the city and county.
It will help generate cash for Swansea's 21st Century schools programme — Quality in Education (QEd).
Swansea Council has to contribute 50 per cent to any school or building improvements projects, with the other half coming from the Welsh Government".
Evening Post May 2014 

When the previous Liberal Democrat-led coalition mooted plans to sell off playing fields, the Labour Group, attacked the idea. Now we have Labour doing the same thing

Npw of course they say there's a difference this time around and that it's 'fairer' in that they will 'incentivise' governors to sell-off school land by allowing schools to use some of the money raised to pay for much-needed building improvements.



OVER 200 people from a Loughor Primary School have completed a march in protest of the proposed selling of their school field.
Pupils, parents and teachers from Tre Uchaf Primary School in Loughor took part in a community march around the local streets yesterday.
Jordan Smith, chairman of the school council, was one of the youngsters who took part.
The ten-year-old said: "If they get rid of our school field we will have no field to play rugby and there will be nowhere for the people in the community to walk their dogs."
Evening Post November 2013
A Swansea Council spokesman said: "We're in discussions with a number of school governing bodies regarding the potential disposal of land within the school sites.
"This includes land at Tre Uchaf that's been identified as potentially surplus to educational requirements, but no decisions have been made and the views of the governing body will be taken into account when cabinet considers the matter in future.
"Any funding generated from such land sales will be reinvested in schools as part of our Quality in Education 2020 programme which aims to help improve the standard of school buildings to boost learning.
"Every school where land has been identified for potential sale could also gain up to £50,000 for projects like improved ICT facilities or outdoor learning."
Ibid

That's alright then 

Maybe the curious part of this Story  is that it doesn't seem to be one that is being extensively covered by the media or bloggers .

It comes to something that it takes apiece in Private eye to alert the general public outside of Swansea in what looks like a hypocritical move by Labour in Swansea who seem intent on selling the equivalents of the family silver



1 comment:

Owen said...

The Assembly passed a law which - as far as I know - was supposed to prevent councils from selling off playing fields without an extensive public consultation or impact assessment. I'm not sure if that includes school playing fields or not. And it looks like the Welsh Government only got around to drafting the regulations in February this year - 4 years after the law was passed. How convenient.