Council leader: 'I haven't been given enough information on Werrington Fields to make decision'

Peterborough’s council leader says he “hasn’t been given all the information” needed to make a decision about fencing off Werrington Fields.

The years-long saga appeared to come to an end last month when Cllr Mohammed Farooq (Peterborough First, Hargate and Hempsted) said the Four Cs Academy Trust, which runs the school that uses the fields for sports, had decided to fence off the portion of the fields designated as education land.

This is around a third of the land, he said, and fencing it off is “ultimately a decision for the academy” which runs Ken Stimpson secondary school.

But now Cllr Farooq says he’s asking council officers to “dig out” more information about the land and legality of fencing the fields off.

“I haven’t been given all the information possible for me to make a decision on this matter and I want to ask them to dig out all the information, get us the legal position of the council, the academy and residents,” he said. "Let’s reach a compromise”.

“There are some people who are saying the decision lies with the council; what land they give the academy," he continued. "Other people are saying it’s education land and it’s entirely the academy's decision. Some people are saying there’s a lease in place; other people are saying it isn’t in place.

“I said: get to the bottom of this, come out with all the facts and figures, then we sit down with the parties,” he added.

But local residents, campaign groups such as Save Werrington Fields and staff and pupils at Ken Stimpson Academy have waited years for a final decision.

The school first suggested it wanted a portion of the fields fenced off for its sports activities in 2019.

Five years, more than £100,000, a legal challenge, an application to government and an airing at Prime Minister’s Questions later, the issue is still not yet resolved.

A council spokesperson said that “officers are reviewing the circumstances around Werrington Fields and we expect to be able to provide an update in the coming weeks”.

Cllr Farooq inherited the issue when he took over the council in November, two months before it emerged the council’s bid to the Secretary of State for Education to change part of the land from education use to residential use had been denied.

The council had hoped this would allow it to fence off a smaller portion of the land, but said it would have to fence off the majority of the fields after this decision.

It subsequently said it would fence off a smaller portion of the fields with the assent of the academy, with which it has a tenancy at will agreement.

Now the future is once again unclear, but Cllr Farooq has said he will sit down with residents, campaign groups and the academy in coming weeks to help bring the matter to a conclusion.