The Council is planning to build a new primary school on Botwell Common and Lake Farm Country Park.
This will destroy one of the last areas of green belt, open space in our area and set a precedent for the erosion of all the green belt in the south of the borough. The Council has argued that it needs a new primary school and yet has refused to consider properly alternative sites. Many believe that the Council is driven by financial motives and not by local educational needs. Many suspect that if it builds a school on our green belt park, it will be able to sell off other sites in the south of the borough to use these resources in the north of the borough. Yet again our community will suffer by this asset stripping of our area.
There is also a fear that once a primary school is built, taking up nearly half of the existing park, the council will inevitably come back at a later date to build a secondary school on the remainder of the park.
The Council is trying to rush through this attack on our green belt park. Already drilling has taken place on Botwell Common as part of the tests for construction on the site. We now need to mobilise urgently a large scale community campaign to prevent the Council destroying our local green belt open spaces.
Quoted from: www.john-mcdonnell.net
