Controversial new Catholic school in Peterborough gets green light after challenge defeated

Members of the Children and Education Scrutiny Committee voted at their meeting on Wednesday to defeat the objections, effectively giving the project the final go-ahead.

Speaking after the meeting, cabinet member for education Cllr Lynne Ayres said: “Naturally I’m very pleased with the result this evening as it is a vindication of all the hard work that has been done by our preparatory team.

“As cabinet minister for education I was the decision-maker on behalf of the council and I’ve said all along that my decision was made after using all due process.

“Nothing that came out this evening has made any difference to that because everything had been done properly.

“I think the members of the committee realised that this was never a question about whether or not we should have faith schools in England because they are completely legitimate, in exactly the same way that community schools are.

“Once we’d established the grounds of the question and they realised that they were there to scrutinise whether due process had taken place or not, then they came to the correct decision, finding that it had.”

The new school will be the first state-funded Catholic school in England for more than 10 years.

It is being 90 per cent funded by the Government - which has given its backing for the school - with the council having to pay between £1.1 million and £1.5 million.

Originally, the Diocese of East Anglia was planning to make selection 100 per cent faith based, but this has been changed. Instead, if the school is oversubscribed 20 per cent of the pupils will be chosen based on their proximity to it rather than on religious grounds.

However, the council has acknowledged that the admissions policy will be “reviewed annually by the school governing body”.

Hampton Water is part of the Hamptons East development which, when completed, will see 3,050 new homes built.

Jonathan Lewis, council service director for education, added: “It was a critical decision this evening as we’re definitely up against a timeline to get this school built.

“I hope that lots of questions have been answered through this process and we can move forward now with the Department of Education supporting the council with the delivery of this school which needs to open in September 2022.”

Councillors Nicola Day (Green) and Terri Haynes and Nick Sandford (Lib Dems) had instigated a call-in over the council’s decision, effectively a challenge.

The basis for the call-in was that they believed the four-week-long public consultation process had been flawed and was not extensive enough.

Of the 1,911 responses to the consultation about the new school that were received, just seven per cent were submitted from residents who live in the Hampton Water area and only 7.2 per in Peterborough in total.

But the council pointed out that only 441 of those who had responded had put where they lived (as it was not mandatory for responders to do so), meaning it was not known where the others lived.

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Day, who teaches in a faith-based school, said: “We’re particularly disappointed for residents of Hampton Water because of the over-subscription criteria of this faith-based school which will affect it in the future.

“We’re concerned because we don’t know how the growing community here will develop as there are only 151 houses built at the moment and whether this school will meet the needs of the residents of Hampton East and Hampton Water.”

Cllr Haynes, also a teacher, added: “The demand for a Catholic faith-based school in this area wasn’t proven and yet it was agreed this evening because the money is in place from the Department of Education to build it.

“I would’ve liked to see other opportunities examined, which was the real basis of our challenge. We’ve never said that this area doesn’t need a school – obviously with the growing population it will need schools. What we wanted was a decision to provide the right kind of school for the residents that we represent.

“The council are up against a timeline to get a school built, this was dumped into their laps and they’ve made a decision based, we believe, on time constraints and not the future well-being of the people and especially the children of this growing area of Peterborough.”

Cllr Sandford added: “I think we successfully identified that there were flaws in the consultation process which was carried out entirely by the Catholic Diocese. It is disappointing then that even in the face of those flaws the committee were not prepared to call it in (reverse their decision to go ahead).

“I think we anticipated that the Conservative members of the committee would back up their Conservative cabinet member. What was really disappointing was that two of the three Labour members of the committee sided with the Conservatives.”

The call-in was defeated by nine votes to two, with one abstention.

The new maintained voluntary aided school run by the Diocese of East Anglia is planned to open in September 2022, initially for 90 pupils before eventually reaching 630. It will also have a 30 place nursery.

Robert Alexander, Local Democracy Reporting Service