School-move plan gains support

THE Liberal Democrat group on Oldham Council has come out in favour of a move to Diggle for Saddleworth School.

Opinion is divided over whether the best place for a brand new £15million school is at its current Uppermill site or Oldham Council’s chosen location of Shaw’s Pallet Works in Diggle.

The Lib-Dems have now agreed to support the Government’s offer to fund the construction of the new school for 1,500 pupils on around 13-and-a-half acres of land.

In a statement, they said: “The only available site which meets these size recommendations is Shaw’s Pallet Works, land designated as a Primary Employment Zone.

“The land proposed for the site of the school buildings in Diggle is not green-belt land. The only potential loss of green-belt land could be for the sports hall and associated playing field, adding a much-needed community asset to the Diggle area, and making it extremely difficult to ever rezone this land for any other purpose.

“While it is true that the Diggle site faces challenges, primarily safe access for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic, these are issues that the planning regulations require to be taken fully into consideration and accounted for before any work could commence.

“If the new school were not to be sited in the proposed Diggle site, the current classification of the land as Primary Employment Zone could also be very easily reclassified as residential.

“This leaves two very real options — firstly there is a new custom-built modern school in Diggle (incidentally possibly raising property values in the village), or secondly there could well be a new housing estate of 300-400 houses.”

They added that the Uppermill site is below the recommended size at roughly eight to 10 useable acres, resulting in either a taller building, reduced sports facilities onsite, or reduced on-site parking.

The renovation and reconstruction of the school on its current site would also not only be difficult, but would be disruptive to pupils and potentially dangerous with children effectively being taught in a building site.

And the statement warns: “While it is Oldham Council’s responsibility to present a suitable site to Education Funding Authority, they must agree it is suitable, and at this time they do not feel that the current Uppermill site fits their criteria of a suitable site.”

Lib-Dem Councillor John McCann (pictured) said: “When I was at school, my teacher taught me ‘hope for the best, plan for the worst’.

“In this situation, this is the worst case — no new school, the old school closes as it is falling down or fails fire safety checks, children bussed out across the borough to several different schools with spare places, 300 to 400 new homes in Diggle but no local secondary school for their children to go to and a derelict site in the centre of Uppermill, ripe for further house building.”