When the letter arrived through Steve Barker’s door before Christmas last year, he was “flabbergasted”, the IT worker says. It was a document, from the chief executive of a proposed free school, telling him that the playing field barely eight metres from the front door of his quiet cul-de-sac home in Blackheath, south London, had been bought by the government’s Education Funding Agency (EFA).
This purchase had happened so that a “small” secondary school could be placed on the site, the letter said. Its building would probably loom over the houses of Barker and his neighbours. The proposed site for this 875-pupil school – the International Academy of Greenwich (IAG) – is next to a flood plain. Regular inundations from the Quaggy river are only held back by an eight-foot wall.
The site, which features a playing field and tennis court, enjoys what seemed to be protected status as metropolitan open land, the urban equivalent of the green belt. This says that building is only allowed in “exceptional” need.
The letter said, correctly, that “formal consultation” on the plans, and a planning application, would follow. The fact that it appeared the EFA had already spent public money on the project – although the government will not tell residents how much, and it now emerges that the purchase cannot be completed without planning permission – left Barker and his fellow residents feeling that they had been presented with a fait accompli.
The school is due to open in 2018, but before that it will spend two years in a converted church.
This is the strange world of free school planning. The Greenwich development is just one of a number of cases Education Guardian has learned about that see the EFA making arrangements for free schools in advance of conventional planning processes.
David Cameron last year set a target of opening 500 new free schools by 2020, partly in order to cater for a population boom, with officials predicting a 20% increase in secondary school rolls and 8% in primaries by 2024. The EFA is the government agency tasked with helping him to meet that target.
In some cases, millions of pounds of public money has been spent before planning permission is given, meaning, say green belt campaigners, pressure is put on councils to approve applications or risk wasting taxpayer funds. Nevertheless, free school planning applications can – and have been – unsuccessful.
Many cases of problematic planning seem to centre on London. In Hackney, east London, planners recently rejected proposals for the Olive school, a free school set up in temporary premises three years ago, to be housed in a former police station. The site had been bought by the EFA for £7.6m in 2014.
In Bromley, in the capital’s southern suburbs, the EFA spent £16m buying an 11-acre plot for an academy chain. Planning has yet to be obtained so the proposed September 2016 start date has been put back. Schools Week reported last year that 53 free schools had their opening put back during 2014-15, many as a result of difficulties securing sites.
Another case is in Osterley, west London, where the EFA paid £11.8m in February 2015 to buy a playing field site also on metropolitan open land. Again, the site did not have planning approval, but the EFA bought it with the intention of siting a 1,300-pupil school run by the Sikh-ethos Nishkam group there. The proposal was given planning permission last December, but local residents campaigning against the scheme delayed the building after launching a judicial review challenge, which is due to start on 5 July.
Now Education Guardian has learned the National Audit Office is investigating the case. The NAO said, in a letter to a resident dated 14 June, it is looking into whether the EFA complied with guidelines in buying the site, its rationale for paying £11.8m, and “the potential financial risk associated with purchasing land before planning permission was obtained”.
The residents say the site is not equipped for the traffic that will be generated. Further, they allege that Hounslow council, which approved the planning application, was guilty of “predetermination” – favouring the application before it went to planning – having secretly worked to plan for the school, including with the EFA, in advance.
It is understood that Hounslow had since early 2015 been working with the EFA, a local rugby club and Sky TV, whose HQ is nearby, on plans for the siting of two free schools. These are the Nishkam and a non-denominational secondary, called the Bolder Academy – with 3,000 pupils between them sitting on former greenfield sites.
Tom Bruce, Hounslow’s cabinet member for education, described the suggestion of “predetermination” as a “very serious and unfounded allegation”, pointing out that planning authorities were separate legally from councils and that the Niskham application had been discussed in a public meeting lasting more than four hours.
Yet much of the development of free schools plans looks to be, at least to residents and green belt lobbyists, an often untransparent and chaotic approach to school place planning.
Last December, the Campaign to Protect Rural England highlighted several cases of the EFA buying sites before they had been set out in councils’ local plans. “This is highly prejudicial to the development plan process; it is not transparent and bypasses local consultation; it undermines the proper investigation of alternative sites; and it makes it more difficult for planning committees to refuse permission,” it said.
The CPRE lists 27 “protected” green sites in and around London that are in line for development as free schools. Most of these are not listed as potential school sites in councils’ development plans, despite government guidance saying planning applications should usually be considered against these documents.
The EFA seems to be between a rock and a hard place: it needs to find sites in a very challenging market for land. Might its ongoing struggles not just reflect the difficulty of catering for England’s population boom?
Alice Roberts, green spaces campaigner at CPRE London, doesn’t think so. “What the EFA should be doing is working with councils to identify appropriate sites on non-protected land. What they appear to be doing is working behind the scenes to target protected land on the basis that they feel it can be built on. When people object, it’s partly a nimbyism thing. But people also feel that our land is meant to be protected. And there is actually a lot of brownfield land out there.”
Hugh Ellis, interim chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association, says planning for schools is in “chaos”, with free schools “just sticking up buildings which may or may not be appropriate for educational purposes”. He adds that, thanks to deregulation since 2010, “the English planning process [as a whole] is on its knees.”
A spokesperson for the New Schools Network, the government-funded body that lobbies for and supports free schools, says: “It is certainly the case that sites remain the biggest challenge for groups proposing free schools, especially in urban areas. But these challenges are complex and the specifics vary across the country.
“When making their applications, free school groups are asked to do initial research on potential sites, but the decision on whether to approve a school proposal is based on the case they make for the need for a school and their capabilities to deliver the proposed school …
“Once a free school has been approved, it is down to government – at both a national and local level – and schools to then secure the best site for their school. Many local authorities could do much more to constructively help schools find usable sites and work through the planning processes in a timely manner to ensure schools get set up quickly.”
The Blackheath residents are far from convinced of this system’s effectiveness. Barker says other parts of Greenwich borough have a greater need for school places, and points to two other sites he thinks should be investigated.
Barker’s neighbour Marcia Laming says: “I do not think putting a school on a water meadow is a good idea.” The local Labour MP, Clive Efford, wrote in March to Nick Gibb, the schools minister, of his “deep concerns, shared by the overwhelming majority of local residents”, about the plans.
Marika Douglas has lived in her house next to the playing field site for 50 years. She says: “The whole business stinks. They did not tell us as residents what they were doing before choosing the site. The school conducted a consultation in December, but they only told us halfway through where the temporary site was going to be. When I complained to the EFA, they said the consultation was not its responsibility. It is ridiculous.”
In a letter to Efford, Lord Nash, the free schools minister, confirmed that it was up to would-be free schools to organise consultations. Efford says the DfE’s hands-off approach to consultations “underlines the flaws in the DfE’s free schools policy”.
Nick Zienau, chief executive of the IAG, who signed the December letter to residents, told Education Guardian the completion of the site’s purchase was dependent on winning planning approval, and that the EFA had spent three years searching for a suitable permanent home. He said: “The [IAG] was founded in 2013 by a group of parents and educators to offer an international education. This is supported by local parents who want a school with a focus on languages, a global education and the individual needs of each student. We will continue to work with the local community in the weeks, months and years ahead.”
The EFA is not expected to put in a planning application for the Greenwich school until late summer at the earliest, and the school’s website indicates it is not certain to open in its permanent home in 2018. In the world of free school planning, it seems that not much is predictable or certain.
