Allegations of petition being ignored

STOKE-ON-TRENT'S £250 million schools strategy is facing a fresh challenge after councillors criticised the consultation process.

On July 22, Stoke-on-Trent City Council's cabinet signed off on the plans to replace seven high schools with five new academies and shut a special school under the Building Schools for the Future programme.

But the decision has now been called in for scrutiny by three council members, triggering a special meeting next week.

Independent councillors John Davis and Alan Rigby and Potteries Alliance leader councillor Peter Kent-Baguley claim the cabinet's decision was based on a flawed consultation process, which deliberately overlooked the scale of public opposition.

The three allege that a 537-name petition submitted by campaigners opposed to the closure plans was ignored, along with a public vote of no confidence at a consultation meeting on the proposals for Berry Hill and St Peter's high schools.

The members also claim that governors at Mitchell High School were "misled" into supporting the plans and then omitted from the consultation process.

And they accuse the council's officers of being "selective in what they recorded" from consultation events.

The councillors have submitted an alternative proposal, which calls for the closure of Berry Hill, St Peter's and Mitchell high schools to be delayed while the council considers calls to merge Mitchell and Berry Hill in a new school on the Mitchell site and combine Edensor with Blurton.

But the strategy approved by the cabinet involves building an academy in either Park Hall or Springfield, Adderley Green, to replace Mitchell and Edensor, while Berry Hill would feed into a different academy in Fenton. The call-in comes despite strongly-worded warnings from council leader Ross Irving that it would be an "utter disaster" to rethink part of the BSF scheme at this late stage in the process.

But Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Mark Fisher said ministers would rather see BSF implemented fairly than pushed through quickly.

Mr Fisher, who has backed the call-in, said: "I believe the entire consultation process has been flawed from the start."

Terry Crowe, who is chairman of governors at Berry Hill High School, said he hoped scrutiny panel members would back the call-in and send a strong message to the cabinet.

He said: "If this strategy goes ahead it will destroy education in the Bucknall area."

The city council has been working on the Building Schools for the Future project since 2003, although the first detailed plans were not put forward until December 2007.