We’ve looked at what was going on behind the scenes in summer 2018 between Cotham School, Mike Jackson and Gary Collins – but what was happening in public?
First, when Cotham published its proposed fence plan in May 2018, Gary Collins told the school in no uncertain terms that it couldn’t do that without a planning application. And on 13 July 2018 BCC sent the school a formal letter confirming that. It also said that any application by the school must recognise community use of the land and mitigate any restriction of public access. So from the community’s point of view, there would be a planning application before any fence could go up – we would be consulted, and a range of factors including accessibility and discriminatory impacts; wildlife and trees; the heritage status of the land and the maintenance of the perimeter walkways would all be considered.
On 20 July 2018 Darren Jones MP hosted a mediation meeting between the community and the school, at which compromise solutions and alternatives to fencing were discussed and the school participants committed to considering these over the summer.
But then on 24 July 2018, with no warning (including to the Council), Cotham School removed the Council’s existing signs from the land and replaced them with its own, renaming Stoke Lodge as ‘Cotham School Playing Field’ and claiming it as their private property with no unauthorised access.
Obviously, things kicked off at that point. Here is Darren Jones’ response:
We wrote to all Councillors that same day, asking for urgent intervention. We said:
‘We are very disappointed that, having attended a meeting only a few days ago to discuss ways of resolving the situation, the school has taken this action, which it had clearly decided on before that meeting. This indicates a lack of good faith in its conduct towards the community and to Darren Jones who facilitated the meeting, as well as a disregard for the Council’s wishes…
As a community we have considered the possibility of making a second TVG application… the school’s challenge to the Council’s earlier decision to award TVG status resulted in significant costs in time and money for both the Council and the local community and out of respect for our Council’s resources, our thinking has been that we would not make a second TVG application at this time. However, if the school does not wish to work in partnership with the community we will have no option but to review our position.’
It shouldn’t therefore have come as a shock that when Cotham showed up to the next mediation meeting on 14 September, saying that they had not even bothered to look at our alternative proposals over the summer, we decided to act. The school’s conduct in that meeting was particularly belligerent – no doubt because they now felt they had Mike Jackson’s private backing (click here). We were told that unless we closed down our Facebook page, stopped making information requests and stopped campaigning, the school would put a bigger fence around even more of the playing field and never unlock the gates.
Here’s how Darren Jones described that meeting:
That’s correct – if Cotham’s lead governor had been less focussed on backroom negotiations and power play, and had engaged with mediation in good faith, then perhaps the TVG application might not have been made following that meeting. And if Cotham had not tried to evade normal planning processes, and had just made an application following the same rules that apply to everyone else, the TVG application could not have been made, precisely because of the planning process. Cotham’s own conduct both provoked and enabled these applications.
We need to talk about Stoke Lodge 