Bishop ready to reject Radclyffe?

Catholic school may go to Grange

SPECULATION is growing that the Bishop of Salford has rejected Radclyffe as the site for the new £30 million Catholic high school.

The Oldham Chronicle has been told that the Rt Rev Terence Brain is considering other options, with Grange School mooted as the likely choice.

Bishop Brain met councillors and officers last week after proposals to build the school — a replacement for St Augustine’s, Werneth, and Our Lady’s, Royton — at the Meridian Business Centre were scrapped by the council.

The former Radclyffe lower school site, in Broadway, Chadderton, was offered instead. But the bishop wants a central location which is accessible to the whole borough.

The leader of Oldham Council, Howard Sykes, said he had agreed not to comment until he received the Bishop’s decision, expected today.

He confirmed that other council land had been offered.

This includes Grange, which will be replaced by an academy on the Our Lady’s site — all part of the £230 million Building Schools for the Future (BSF) proposals to transform secondary education in Oldham.

Phil Woolas, the MP for Oldham East, has been working to try and reach a solution.

He said: “My understanding is the diocese said it does not want Radclyffe for two very good reasons.

“One is, it wants, as do I, a central site because the people from the east of the borough need to be able to get to it. If it is not central they will go elsewhere.

“The second point is that the proximity of the site to the new Radclyffe school would make social segregation worse rather than better.

“My understanding is that the authority and the diocese were looking for potential other sites. My position is the site has to be acceptable to the people of the east of the borough otherwise there is no point in doing it.”

Oldham Council has to submit its BSF outline business case to the Government by January and Mr Woolas did not know if the deadline would be met.

He warned: “As a government we have bent over backwards to help.

“We must always remember, whatever argument there is inside Oldham, we have to present a united front to the Government because it will lose patience with us.”

A spokesman for Oldham Catholic Schools Parents’ Association said a source had revealed that the bishop had rejected Radclyffe in favour of Grange.

It has campaigned against the Meridian site, but is in favour of Radclyffe and does not want Grange.

The spokesman said that the Grange site was too small, Radclyffe was more central to the majority of the Catholic population of Oldham, and a move there would be less complicated.

The Chronicle has been unable to obtain a comment from the diocese.