November at Stoke Lodge:
5 November 2025: Cotham School makes a planning application to install eight, six-metre tall towers, each with three CCTV cameras, around its leased area at Stoke Lodge (in addition to the six CCTV cameras already in place and the three additional CCTV compounds that are currently on the land without planning permission). This will require digging about 1,000 metres of underground cabling to get power to the places on the field where they want to have cameras. Expensive? Oh yes. Intrusive? Oh yes.
The application was made directly to the Planning Inspectorate (PINS). When Cotham School previously applied for just one CCTV pole, the application was turned down by BCC officers. Is Cotham hoping to persuade PINS that eight is fine when BCC said one was not acceptable? Who knows.
14 November 2025: Cotham School publishes a press statement entitled ‘School Playing Field Targeted in Destructive Vandalism Attack‘. This statement claims that a ‘significant act of vandalism’ has occurred, ‘concentrated in the vicinity of the Cheyne Road footpath access points’, that there is ‘extensive damage’ ‘with large sections deliberately destroyed in a manner that prevents repair or reuse’. Jo Butler, Headteacher of Cotham School, claimed “The damage will cost thousands of pounds to repair”.
Our community does not condone vandalism but neither do we condone inflammatory and misleading claims, which only serve to increase division between the school and the community. There is one (1) damaged and missing panel at the Cheyne Road end of the field. For the sake of accuracy, these panels cost about £40, not ‘thousands of pounds’. There is one (1) damaged and missing panel at the top end of the field (but that wasn’t what the school’s statement was about).
For completeness, one of the ‘spurs of spite’ – the extra bits of fencing that Cotham has installed outside the playing field area to block community use even of the narrow perimeter walkways that previously existed, has been dismantled, though others remain. This spur of fencing out to Ebenezer Lane blocked a wildlife corridor in the vicinity of a known badger sett. The contractors told us they didn’t know why they had been asked to install it in the first place, and we assume it was taken down in response to complaints and ecological advice. That’s also outside the playing field area and not what the school’s statement was about as it wouldn’t affect school use anyway.
As you can imagine, the community is aggrieved that Cotham School is yet again making false claims and trying to portray our much-loved and very safe local green space as a crime hotspot. The community is also a little sceptical about the timing of all this, in a period when the school is trying to build a case for installing 24/7 surveillance of the field. And as always, we object to misinformation from Cotham School.
So we published our own press statement setting out the true facts, and even including a photo of the damaged panel near Cheyne Road. Here it is (taken on 15 November).
We prefer to assume the best of people, so were startled to see that Cotham’s Chair of Governors, Sandra Fryer, had opened an Instagram account to double down on the school’s claims. Here’s her post – she specifically says there are around 15 gaps in the playing field fence in addition to this one (same gap as above, different angle).
Reader, there are not 15 or 16 gaps in the fence. Come and see for yourselves. Cotham’s claims are wildly exaggerated – and despite being made aware of that, the school has not withdrawn them or apologised for misleading the press and the public. Apparently it provided a ‘dossier’ of photos to a local journalist, but many of the photos were of individual screws and fixings, not fence panels.
So why do this at all, and why now? Jo Butler said “The deliberate destruction of our property is unacceptable and morally reprehensible” and we agree. But so are false claims about the extent of it. We will be very interested to see whether similar claims, or links to media coverage of the school’s press statement, turn up in any representations supporting the school’s planning application.
Not for nothing, but the Nolan principles of public life are: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. We love to see it… when we do.
We need to talk about Stoke Lodge 