Browse Sections

• Education
• Special reports

Plans gaffe earns school chiefs a ticking-off

29/12/2006

IT'S emerged that Rochdale's newest primary school was built without full planning permission.

Now education bosses can expect a mild rocket from planning chiefs for continuing work on Sandbrook Community Primary when, technically, they shouldn't have done.

It might have been only a few days before Christmas, but councillors were not given to seasonal cheer when they instructed planning bosses to make their feelings known.

They were concerned that work on the £2M Sandbrook Community Primary School pressed ahead despite advice from the planning department that fresh permission was needed because of changes to the original design. The new school opened in September. It has more than 300 pupils and replaces old primary schools at Hill Top and Hartley Lane.

Chief planning officer Alan Whale explained that after work started on the Hartley Lane site of the new school in 2005, the design was altered, making the building slightly smaller.

But the changes were deemed significant enough to justify a new application to 'regularise the situation' and the education authority was told of this 'months and months ago'.

Yet, Mr Whale said, they didn't do anything about it and work carried on. It was only this month - some three months after the new school was opened - that the planning department had received an application for the changes to go ahead.

Councillors this week approved the belated application, but not without a few grumbles.

Councilllor Allen Brett said: "If this had been an application by a private developer and not the education authority we would have taken action long before now. Not only is it important to maintain standards, but also to show we are doing so."

He was supported by his Labour colleague Tom Bailey and the committee agreed to ask planners to write to education bosses asking for an explanation and reminding them - in view of more new schools being planned for the borough - that planning laws must be adhered to.

The council's head of school services, Sue Brown, told the Observer: "The council followed all the correct procedures in re-submitting the application and did not breach any planning regulations.

"The site already had planning permission and this re-submission was simply to take into account some relatively minor changes and a reduction in the overall size of the original.

"The concerns raised by councillors have been picked up and will be looked at."