Planning permission was granted for this school on 25 January. The school would start in 2019 or 2020, and eventually take in around 1680 students.
Residents who will be very much affected by this development spoke against the application. Balmoral Avenue is a quiet, fairly narrow, residential avenue. Despite promises of a “travel plan”, parents cannot be stopped from bringing their children to school. Even if most do come on foot, the prospect of around 2000 people using the road four times a day during term time is distressing for the long term residents.
The site immediately after it was sold.
The portfolio holder for education, Cllr Fortune, supported the application saying that under the new arrangements for education, the local authority had very little say in where schools are located. The applicant is not the local authority but the academy with the support of the Education Funding Agency (EFA). WBRA have commented before that although EFA purchased the land at a cost of over £16m with taxpayers money, the Land Registry shows the owner of the land with “Title Absolute” to be the E21C Academy.
Cllr Fortune also said the Borough is short of several thousand secondary school places over the next 10 years (precise figures given at the meeting are not available in the minutes). The council is legally obliged to provide secondary school places for all pupils across the whole of the London Borough of Bromley and not necessarily in a specific ward or location. Furthermore, the Council had no legal ability to prevent out-of-borough children applying for places at Bromley schools or to reserve places at Bromley schools for children who live in the Borough or in certain communities.
Peter Dean, Councillor for Kelsey and Eden Park, and Chair of the Development Control Committee, moved that the application be refused. He acknowledged that the London Borough of Bromley was in need of school places to meet its statutory needs. However, Kelsey and Eden Park Ward was adequately covered for local students so there was no need for a further school in that area. The site in Balmoral Avenue had not been designated land for educational use in the draft Local Plan. Whilst there was a responsibility to the parents of children to provide them with school places, there was also a responsibility to local residents, their standards of living and enjoyment of life. Balmoral Avenue was a narrow road which opened out onto Upper Elmers End Road.
Nevertheless permission was granted. WBRA continues to support local residents in seeking stringent conditions on the use of the site both for educational purposes and for community use, particularly the use of the sports facilities in the evenings and at weekends.