Agenda and minutes

The Chair welcomed new and returning Business Panel Members to the meeting; Councillors Hilton, Johnston-Franklin, Morrison and Sorba. The Chair also thanked out-going members of the Panel; Councillors Dacres, Michael, Milne and Moore for all their hard work during their term of office.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the open meeting held on 31 January 2017 be confirmed as a correct record.

Councillor Mallory declared a personal non pecuniary interest in item 3 as a Governor of Abbey Manor College.

Councillor Handley declared a personal non pecuniary interest in item 3 as a Board Member of Brent Knoll and Watergate Schools co-op Trust.

Lewisham Schools Place Planning Strategy

The Executive Director for Children and Young People introduced the report. The Chair stated that local authorities have a duty to provide school places for children in the borough. He asked what the future plans were for a new secondary school in Lewisham. The Executive Director for Children and Young People said there were still places available in some of the Lewisham secondary schools. She added that this was mainly due to the high volume of export of secondary school children to neighbouring boroughs. She said the population bulge in primary schools had not yet worked through to secondary schools. Panel Members were told that the start of the serious deficit of secondary school places would be in 2019/20 hence the justification of 1 form entry for Bonus Pastor and a planned extension of Addey & Stanhope.

The Executive Director for Children and Young People told Panel Members that they should be aware that if there was to be a new secondary school it could only be through the Free School route. This would mean the site could be a Council site or a site on the private market acquired by EFA. She said finding a site in London was difficult in all boroughs, and officers were focusing on filling up existing schools, and exploring opportunities for a new school as they arose.

The Chair asked how long it would take to build a new school and was told that a large secondary school could take 2-3 years, longer if there were planning difficulties. The Chair said this was worrying, as talk of building a new school had been going on before the current administration and to date no progress had been made.

The Executive Director for Children and Young People informed the Panel that the Council should not open a new secondary school when there were vacant places in existing secondary schools, and stated that it was rational that the Council had seen the urgency in providing places for primary school children and this would continue till 2018/19.

Councillor Mallory said he was aware of the difficulty in securing a site to build a new school, and wanted to find out if there was any scope to expand existing schools, especially as most of them were built under the BSF programme. The Executive Director for Children and Young People said most of them have not got the space to expand, but this may need to be considered.

Councillor Mallory asked if other sites have been investigated, and was told that officers had not done a recent site trawl for secondary schools as the priority had been for primary school places but EFA had failed to secure a site for the Citizen School.

Following a detailed discussion, and in response to a question about the Council’s strategic plan to address the issue of secondary school places and securing additional funding for this, the Executive Director for Children and Young People said that the strategy addressed the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

RESOLVED that under Section 100(A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 of Part 1 of Schedule 12(A) of the Act, as amended by the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to information) (Amendments) (England) Regulations 2006 and the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information:

The following is a summary of the items considered in the closed part of the meeting:

Ashmead and Addey & Stanhope School Expansions

The Chair said Business Panel Members received and noted the Head of Law’s letter.

RESOLVED that the decision of the Mayor be noted.

This item was not required for further discussion.

Meeting ended: 7:55pm                                 Chair ………………