Rip it up and start again – this school will be rebuilt ...

9:00am Thursday 14th September 2006

Comments (0)   Have your say »

A NEW school will be built in Culcheth after councillors backed revamped proposals for the future of the town's education system.

Meeting on Monday night, members of the executive board agreed millions of pounds should be ploughed into demolishing Culcheth High School and building a new school on the same site.

They also agreed that the initially preferred plan, announced earlier in the year, of closing Padgate or Woolston High Schools (or both) was now on hold for a further 12 months. And they announced that millions of pounds would be pumped into William Beamont High School, in Orford, in future years.

Clr Sheila Woodyatt, the council's executive member for education, told the Town Hall meeting that the decision showed bosses were listening to the people.

She added: "We promised it was open and that no decisions have been made. People didn't believe us but it was genuine and we have listened to people.

"In Woolston and Padgate, people said they weren't sufficiently consulted."

The meeting heard that councillors were sent hundreds of letters from the Woolston and Padgate areas arguing that the schools were centres of the community and vital to life.

Under the initial plans, bosses had wanted to either merge the two schools at Padgate or build a new school at Hillock Lane in Woolston.

Now council leader Ian Marks says there are other options to curb the problem of falling pupil numbers in that part of town. They will be discussed in coming weeks.

Now the nearly £20million expected to be spent there will be put into refurbishing the crumbling' Culcheth High after officers were told if they couldn't open the new school by 2009, they would lose the Government funding.

Labour councillor Colin Froggatt accused the executive of fudging the decision.

He said: "It is obvious from reading the papers that Woolston or Padgate will have to close. It is an easy option but not the right decision. It seems to me it has also been a party political decision."