Archived Articles
Promoted by Stephen Reid, 34 Centurion Way, Hatch Warren, Basingstoke RG22 4TJ
COPPICE SPRING ILLUSTRATES A POLICY WEAKNESS
29th July 2022
The Coppice Spring Academy hides in plain sight in Pack Lane, Kempshott. Normally attracting little public attention, it has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. Following an OFSTED inspection, it was rated ‘inadequate’ and was told that it is providing pupils with an “unacceptably poor education” and has been in a “state of serious decline over time”
Here’s a link to the story in the Basingstoke Gazette: https://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/20286551.inadequate-ofsted-coppice-spring-school-basingstoke/
The Academy has a difficult job to do. Coppice Spring caters for pupils with social, emotional, and mental health difficulties. The pupils need to be closely supervised and helped to cope with their problems. Sadly, inspectors found pupils were “beyond control” and staff feared being hurt.
About half of Basingstoke’s secondary schools are academies, which means that their Trusts are responsible for their success, not the County Council. In Coppice Spring’s case it is Catch 22 Multi Academies Trust Limited.
I have no axe to grind against academy schools. But the Coppice Spring inspection results have raised a policy issue in my mind.
With a ‘Hampshire County Council’ school, if we become aware of a decline starting, the County’s officers can engage with the Head Teacher and the Governing body, with the hope of addressing the problems quickly, and certainly before they lead to a bad OFSTED inspection. With an academy school, the County’s officers have no such right.
Instead, the power to intervene in an academy school is vested in the Regional Schools Commissioner. And the clue to the problem this causes is in the first word – Regional. Covering a large area, the RSC has a huge number of schools on her plate so, not surprisingly, she is likely to intervene AFTER a poor OFSTED inspection rather than before. This can lead to months being lost when improvement actions could have been started but were not.
I believe the government needs to examine this issue with a view to placing an obligation on the RSC to monitor schools more closely and intervene more quickly. Alternatively, give the Local Education Authority the right to monitor schools on her behalf and report when action is needed.
We all know that schools’ performances go up and down. The important thing is that when a school starts going down, the decline is picked up quickly and improvement action taken. It should not take an OFSTED inspection to trigger remedial action. This is a weakness in the academy system.
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HOW CAN OLD DOWN NOT BE A LOCAL NATURE RESERVE?
23 July 2022
This is something of a rhetorical question because I know the answer: Old Down was always intended to be a Local Nature Reserve alongside Beggarwood Park, on the other side of the A30. But then, about ten years ago, someone unknown drew a careless line on a map showing a potential road across Old Down to access southern Manydown and everything ground to a halt. Thankfully that impediment seems now to have been lifted.So, the alternative question is ‘why is it taking the Council so long to grant LNR status to this wonderful community asset?’ There have been petitions and motions and all the paraphernalia that Councillors and voters use to demonstrate support for this move. Everyone wants it to happen. But still we have no date.The Borough Council needs to commit to a timeline for delivering this protection to Old Down, before someone else, ignorant of the area, starts drawing lines without knowing how valued this wonderful area is.
SHOULD BASINGSTOKE TOWN HAVE PARISH COUNCILS?
18th July 2022
There is a strong case developing for Basingstoke to be ‘parished’.
By accident of history, some of the largest developments are parished whilst others are not. Chineham has a Parish Council and its neighbour Sherfield Park split away to form its own. Rooksdown has a parish council, but areas like Beggarwood, Hatch Warren, Kempshott and the town centre do not.
The reason is that the rural areas of Basingstoke and Deane had parish councils from the outset, but the town did not. But some rural areas have now been developed and are urban in nature, and this produces the anomaly. There is no logic in the current position.
The case for creating new parish Council is therefore building on the grounds of equity. But it is emphasised by the government’s direction of travel for local government reform.
My interpretation of the government’s intentions is that it is seeking to establish a new ‘top tier’, above the County Councils. This new top tier will be headed by a directly elected leader and will have money and powers devolved to it. The prize for the government in this is that it will have one person to phone when it wants a problem sorted.
So far, so clear. But the future of the current two-tier system is much less obvious. I have seen a letter from a minister (now resigned) that speaks of districts voluntarily coming together to provide shared services. I see nothing in the government’s proposals to address the chronic under-funding of the existing Counties and Districts. This makes me think that the long-term intention is to see the current Councils wither on the vine.
But who then would represent the electors at a local level? This is unclear. That is where Parish Councils could come in. With Councillors elected for small communities, there can be considerable local knowledge brought to bear and a voice for areas that could find themselves represented by increasingly distant Councillors if the two-tier system declines.
I used to think that parishing the whole of Basingstoke would be unnecessary and another burden on the Council taxpayers. But, if my analysis of the direction of local government reforms is correct, I think it may turn out to be essential.
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SLOW DOWN BASINGSTOKE’S RATE OF GROWTH
29th June 2022. Updated 26 July 2022
The latest figures from the national census make interesting – and worrying – reading and reinforce my opinion that the rate of house building in the Borough should slow down.
The census website tells us that ‘in Basingstoke and Deane, the population size has increased by 10.4%, from around 167,800 in 2011 to 185,200 in 2021. This is higher than the overall increase for England (6.6%), where the population grew by nearly 3.5 million to 56,489,800. Basingstoke and Deane’s population increase is higher than the increase for the South East (7.5%).’
Is this because Basingstoke has a higher birth-rate? Certainly not – the hospital wasn’t reporting that when I visited a couple of months ago – and the official figures don’t bear that out, either. In 2019 the number of live births in Basingstoke was 1,950 and the number of deaths was 1.343 (source Hampshire County Council Strategic Planning September 2020). That means Basingstoke and Deane produced a demand for homes for an extra 607 people that year.
Even if all those 607 lived as singletons, we get nowhere near the almost 1,000 homes a year demanded of us. If they pair up (and most will) the number of homes need to cater for Basingstoke’s ‘natural’ growth is even lower.
So why has Basingstoke been growing so fast? The reason is simple: the planners look at historical trends of population growth and use them to predict future needs.
That is wrong. The analogy is that our planners are steering the ship by looking at its wake.
As long as we build more homes than we need, people will move here, because this is where the homes are and because Basingstoke is a great place to live.
We’re stuck in a vicious circle – we build more homes, so people move in and the population goes up. Then, because the homes have been occupied, we are told to build yet more, to cater for a growing population. Growth has become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
And the bitter truth is that this self-fulfilling prophesy is causing us to sacrifice Basingstoke’s green fields to build homes that cater for other districts’ housing needs. It is not sustainable. It is not just, and it is not justifiable. It must stop.
We have, coming up, a once-in-a-decade opportunity to break this vicious circle. I want the Borough Council, in its new local plan, to argue that what Basingstoke has done for decades is an ‘exceptional circumstance’ (as the Government calls it) that justifies a slower pace of growth in the future.
If it has the courage, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council can adopt a housing policy in the interests of the people of Basingstoke, not other districts. They can fight to stop this hell-for-leather rush to develop.
Do the Councillors have the courage to grasp this nettle and fight this battle on behalf of their residents? The next few months will tell.
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MORE ABOUT BRIGHTON HILL ROUNDABOUT
28th June 2022
On behalf of residents who suffered phone and broadband disruption, I visited the Brighton Hill roundabout roadworks for a second time, to review progress on both the repairs and the improvement works themselves. The first time I went, I gate-crashed a meeting! This time it was official and I accompanied Nick Adams-King, the Executive Member at Hampshire with responsibility for Highways Operations.
As of 24th June, the broken phone and internet cables have been repaired, so everyone should be up and running again. If anyone still has a problem, they should contact their service providers immediately. The outages affected thousands of people and the repairs took a long time, despite OpenReach working round the clock in very difficult conditions.
The onward route of the cables that were severed is being checked and, if deep trenches have to be dug, the ground is being checked for unexpected pipes and cables. The contractors are using machines that suck up debris and their diggers do not have teeth on the shovels, both to avoid digging down too deep. Every effort is being made to avoid another mishap.
The roundabout improvements are progressing well, and the contractors are hopeful that the cable strike will not delay the overall programme.
Currently, huge soakaways are being put in place to ensure the drainage of the the extended carriageways. In some places it is now possible to see the extent by which the carriageway will be widened and the line that the new kerbs will take.
I found some of the technical details fascinating. As might be expected a lot of the work is taking place on chalk, and this limits the months in which it can be carried out. Chalk loses its integrity when it gets too wet, so much of the work has to be completed in the summer months.
Councillor Adams-King and I have asked for regular updates on progress, which I will report to local residents. I am grateful to Nick, as Executive Member responsible for Highways Operations, for taking a personal interest in this project and making time to review it on site.
The roadworks are an inconvenience, but I believe the gain will be worth it.
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3,000 HOMES ON POPHAM AIRFIELD – BAD IDEA, OR CUNNING PLAN?
June 2022
BACKGROUND: one of the proposals in the Borough Council’s draft local plan is to put 3,000 homes on Popham Airfield. I think that would be an error.
DETAIL: Popham is separated from the rest of the town and three thousand homes will not generate enough pupils to populate a secondary school. That means students being bussed into Basingstoke.
I believe it will also not be large enough to support a doctor’s surgery, so people who are unwell will be obliged to bus or drive for miles to get the help they need.
And, building there could well open floodgates that will see development applications for an important part of Hampshire’s countryside. This proposal could have significant implications for the future of Basingstoke and Winchester.
But is that the cunning plan? Is the idea to breach the previously held taboo that building in the gap between Basingstoke and Winchester is not to be allowed? Is the idea to get Winchester Council to join in, approve the long-discussed development near Micheldever Station, and take some of the pressure off Basingstoke town?
If that is, indeed, the plan, it won’t work. Any homes built on the Winchester side of the boundary will benefit Winchester City Council only. All it will do is allow a Government inspector to see another area for large-scale development and throw thousands of extra homes into the plan that Basingstoke simply does not need.
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WELL DONE, BRIGHTON HILL SCHOOL!
May 2022
Background: Some years ago, Brighton Hill Community School was in a bad place. A series of head teachers had failed to turn it round and under one of them the decline was so bad that admissions dropped to something like 80 in a year – the school’s capacity is to admit 255. Parents in the area clearly knew that something was wrong and they were sending their children elsewhere, including Alresford and Winchester. I was saddened by what was happening.
Then came the appointment of Chris Edwards and, to cut a long story short, the school has received its 2022 OFSTED report which awarded Brighton Hill three Outstanding measures and one Good. This results in a rating of Good overall.
The parents know that the school has been turned round by Chris Edwards and his team. Now it not only admits its full complement of 255 each year, but also runs a waiting list.
Normally it takes a lot longer for a school to shake off a bad reputation. It used to be said that it takes ten years to acquire a good reputation and one to lose it.
Head Teacher Edwards has made real changes and he has also used social media to accelerate the turnaround in public opinion. A constant stream of positivity through Twitter (#YellowArmy) has helped to enhance the school’s image.
Of course, ‘Twitter Spin’ would count for nothing if the transformation of the school itself had not been achieved. But it has, and the OFSTED report reflects that. The South West of Basingstoke now has one of the best secondary schools in the country (and others in Basingstoke are making great strides too, just to be fair).
Parents must always choose the most suitable schools for their children, but I am confident that the need to bus children out of the town is now over. The turnaround at Brighton Hill is hugely important, not just for the South West of Basingstoke but also for the whole town.
Well done, Chris Edwards and your team!
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WHAT HAPPENED AT BRIGHTON HILL ROUNDABOUT?
May 2022
Background: thousands of phone and internet lines have gone down. The cause is that the contractors at the Brighton Hill Roundabout drilled through some crucial cables. But it is not as simple as that ….
Detail: before road works like these start, the contractors send for maps of utilities and services that lie under the ground. They check, to avoid fouling the services.
It gets more complicated. Before drilling, the contractors use Ground Penetrating Radar to check for cables out of position. In this case, the cables were 2.5 metres below the surface and the radar did not pick them up. Does that mean that there needs to be a change of procedures on sites where deep drilling has to take place?
Once the damage was done, the contractors had to dig a trench into which the OpenReach workers could climb to make repairs. That took time, and working down at that level was hot and unpleasant. The fibre optic cables were repaired quickly but the copper ones took longer.
There will be lessons to learn here and I expect this incident will cause reviews of regulations and future working practices.