Tell us what you really want: Cotham’s 2014 options paper

Following on from yesterday’s post, we’re still in 2014 and in the middle of the TVG1 process. Cotham School consistently claimed that it needed the whole of Stoke Lodge, didn’t know anything about any plans to turn it into a sports hub, and wanted to keep it as playing fields. Now let’s have a look at the options paper drawn up by Sandra Fryer with help from a planning consultant setting out ‘options for the long term use of Stoke Lodge’. You can see the options paper in full here.

Option 1 is to put up some extra signs (about keeping dogs off pitch areas) – the status quo is said not to be possible because of the risk assessment, but we now know that the risk assessment was overstated and left out crucial features like the presence of teachers during lessons (click here). It’s worth noting that just a few weeks after that assessment, it was already being suggested that signs and some minor fence repairs would enable the school to use Stoke Lodge – and then by November 2014 governors’ minutes record Ms Fryer suggesting ‘Need to revisit risk assessment and revise going back to using Stoke Lodge’ – the school didn’t really believe the risk assessment either, it was just a useful tool.

Option 2 is to move all sport to SL to save their hire costs at Coombe Dingle, but noting that year-round use of SL is not possible due to waterlogged pitches (still true).

Option 3 is to dispose of Stoke Lodge (something the school has always denied considering) and to develop a new all weather pitch on the school site (something they now have). It notes that ‘the University will be cross’ if they do this (as opposed to ‘University happy’ for option 1), although it’s not immediately obvious why the University’s opinion should be relevant to Cotham’s delivery of the PE curriculum.

Option 4 is to fence the site, restricting access to ‘minimal community use around edges of site’ – sound familiar? It also involves an all-weather pitch at Stoke Lodge which ‘could be an attractive asset for the school’. Note the comment that ‘this may be most difficult to resolve with the Community since no recognition of their presence let alone their dogs’. And yet this ‘most difficult’ option is the one that the school insisted on implementing in 2019 – and then it got annoyed that it didn’t go down well!

Option 5 is to split the fields into a ‘significant community park’ (perhaps the half and half solutions set out in the Bush Consultancy feasibility study?) plus more intensive sports use including an all-weather pitch.

Option 6 is a ‘sports hub’ proposal with an all-weather pitch and a ‘small local park’.

Extraordinarily, option 7 involved the school taking over control of Stoke Lodge house (the Adult Learning Centre) as well! For those who have been around long enough, this is essentially the Biddulph Plan (that the school has always denied it had anything to do with).

Each of options 4 to 7 involves putting an all-weather pitch on Stoke Lodge – which would mean more fencing around the pitch itself, and floodlighting (below is an extract from a document prepared by the PE staff showing that they won’t put floodlights around their onsite facilities because of local residents – but think it’s ok to do this at Stoke Lodge):

Now of course, this was 9 years ago. Some of these ideas have been actioned (there is now an all-weather pitch as well as a multi-use games area on the school site, although these are mostly left empty while lessons happen at Stoke Lodge). It’s fair to say that we don’t know what the equivalent plan now would look like. But it’s absolutely clear that Cotham will always be seeking to develop Stoke Lodge to the school’s commercial advantage (we know from the PE staff’s comments (click here) that it won’t be an educational advantage).

That’s why the TVG is vital to protect this important open space as we know it. Cotham is reluctant to admit that it doesn’t want the TVG because of the impact on its development ambitions, although the Headteacher let that slip in her witness statement to TVG1. That’s why Cotham ran with the ‘Ofsted requires a fence’ argument, but we know that this claim isn’t true. The school has been operating under a false flag; PE lessons at Stoke Lodge are not under threat from a TVG, but this important open space is certainly under threat of future development.