Ten years ago today (on 24 March 2014), two Cotham School employees (its Facilities Manager and Business Manager at the time) visited Stoke Lodge Playing Fields to conduct a risk assessment. Cotham had been using Stoke Lodge for PE lessons since 1 September 2000, but this was the very first time it had assessed whether there were any risks to be mitigated at the playing fields. We know from evidence given by Sandra Fryer, the Chair of Governors, to the TVG1 public inquiry in 2016, that she personally requested the risk assessment.
Why the specific need for a risk assessment at that point? Three days earlier, consultants (who had been commissioned to advise the school on its proposed bid for grant funding), had produced a report stating that Cotham would be more likely to succeed in a bid for grant funding if the application involved safeguarding risks or sports facilities.
The consultants’ report was presented to Cotham’s Finance, Property & General Purposes Committee (of which Ms Fryer was also chair) on 24 March 2014, alongside the risk assessment report that had been created that same day at her request, and that purported to identify safeguarding risks at a sports facility. Here’s an extract from the minutes of that meeting:
Here’s the first page of the risk assessment that the governors were looking at in that meeting:
There are a few things to note here:
- First, the school’s claim that it was forced to stop using Stoke Lodge in response to the risk assessment and that it started using Coombe Dingle instead is not, and will never be, true. It had stopped using Stoke Lodge well before the end of 2013, and had been using Coombe Dingle for years as its preferred location anyway.
- Secondly, the governors did not consider that a full perimeter fence was required in order for it to resume doing PE at Stoke Lodge – the minutes refer to repairing existing fences and putting some signs up, and going back in September. It also acknowledges that it would be unwise to spend money on fencing before the outcome of the ongoing Village Green application was known! Ms Fryer reported to the Full Governing Body Meeting on 2 April 2014 that ‘The Stoke Lodge risk assessment has been completed, to be back in use in September’. You might well ask what changed after that, and the answer seems to be that there was something of a power struggle about the best solution for educational outcomes – you can read more about that here.
- Thirdly, the facilities manager – who, let’s note, was producing a risk assessment in the particular context of the proposed funding bid noted above, and who was not an independent expert – states that there are insufficient dog waste bins on site. The number of dog waste bins has increased since then, paid for by funding voted for by local residents via the Neighbourhood Partnership. The other dog-related risk he identified was ‘dog attack’ – this is the only risk he rated as ‘high’, despite the total absence of any dog attack incidents. BCC’s health and safety officer subsequently reviewed the risk assessment and commented:
- ‘do we have any evidence of attack’? ‘Interaction does not mean attack. My general understanding of dogs and balls is their desire to join in the play/activity as opposed to attacking staff/students. Plus I would suggest that there are already ‘Existing Controls’ being the staff on duty, supervising the students. They can politely request that dog owners remove their dogs… The majority of law-abiding citizens of Bristol would respond to such a sensible request.’
So what we have is:
- an overstated risk assessment
- written to support a bid for significant grant funding
- which the school itself did not really believe at the time, but
- on which it has placed massive (and undue) weight in subsequent years.
Obviously, it was a useful PR tactic for Cotham to talk up the issue of dog mess. No one likes to see it, and it remains really important that dog owners pick up after their dogs. We’re grateful that members of our community take particular care to ensure that our village green is clear of both litter and dog mess – that’s part of our community commitment to looking after Stoke Lodge. But issues about dog mess are also completely irrelevant to village green status and are managed with relative ease by other schools (BCC’s health and safety officer said ‘Other schools address the risk of dog mess by a visual sweep of the playing fields prior to use’ and this is also a requirement for staff under Cotham’s own health and safety policy).
But despite the fact that the hard evidence tells a different story (and you can read more about that in previous blog posts here and here), it seems that over the years Cotham has locked itself into believing its own mythology – and has spent (and continues to spend) tens of thousands of pounds in pursuit of having a fence, when in fact building good relations with the community, and some appropriate signage (e.g. about the locations of the bins) is all that is required.
It’s time for Cotham governors to step back and take a fresh look – they might rediscover, after a decade of misunderstanding, that they are able to provide PE lessons on a village green and that working with the community (rather than fighting it) is a good thing.
We need to talk about Stoke Lodge 