A recent response to a Freedom of Information request shows that even while installing its new fence at Stoke Lodge, Cotham School was talking to Bristol City Council about moving to an alternative site for PE. We first saw this in an email that was sent on the same day in September 2025 that the school started construction work (link here):
It’s a remarkable question to be asking at that time and in those circumstances. That same email included a rather strangely-worded statement:
‘We have carefully checked, the size of the fields at Stoke Lodge are below the BB 103 standards for a school of 1700 students.’
There are a number of issues here – first, the BB 103 standards are guidelines (not requirements) for new-build schools. They expressly recognise that some schools may be on restricted sites and may require off-site provision. The guidelines say nothing whatsoever about the size of that off-site provision. The reality is that plenty of schools have limited or no on- or off-site grass pitches of their own. So it’s not really a relevant comparison at all.
Secondly, Cotham School often quotes large numbers (1,700+) for its student population, but those don’t align with reality. Cotham’s official admission number is 1,215 (243 pupils in each of years 7-11). There was a time when the school was over-subscribed, but not any more. It is currently consulting on reducing its admission number to 240 as it moves to eight form entry rather than nine. And look at what they say on the school website here:
Why ‘all five years’? Students in years 12 and 13 attend the North Bristol Post-16 Centre (NBP16) which is a ‘soft federation’ between Cotham and Redland Green Schools. Cotham School does not provide PE lessons for students at NBP16; PE is a mandatory but non-examined subject for years 7-11.
So simply taking 243 and multiplying by 7 is intentionally misleading in a number of ways. ‘243 x 7’ should be 243 (soon to be 240) x 5. And that matters because of what they go on to do with those numbers.
In the same FOI response we see one of Cotham’s possible plans for Stoke Lodge, sent by Sandra Fryer to John Smith (Exec Director of Growth and Regeneration) and others on or before 26 September 2025:
Here we can also see that Cotham has run the numbers so as to suggest that it needs every bit of Stoke Lodge that it has chosen to include within its new fence line – although interestingly, in this plan residents would have been able to walk a circuit of the field that included the pathway behind the old outbuildings. Just a few weeks later Cotham blocked this off with an additional spur of fencing outside the playing field area (even though they don’t use that bit of land at all) – deliberately choosing to force walkers, children and dogs to take their chances with cars coming off the main road into the car park instead. Anyway, let’s deconstruct the numbers.
First, Cotham have focused in on the guidelines for soft outdoor PE only – even though BB103 says that if there is restricted on-site space, this is the lowest priority type of surface (presumably because pitches can always be hired off-site if required). So even for a new-build school, this is not essential. Based on 1,215 pupils, the guideline suggests 48,525 sqm, not 65,500. From this they deduct the soft outdoor space on Cotham School’s own site, which includes an all-weather pitch which is assessed under BB103 as twice its actual area. Cotham suggests that this is calculated as 6,400 sqm. If correct, that would lead to a guideline figure of 42,125 sqm which is around 10.4 acres. Less than half the area of Stoke Lodge Playing Field. You only get to a higher figure than that by assuming that PE is provided for 400+ pupils who actually attend the NBP16. And trying to claim that a flexible guideline for on-site space at new-build schools is a mandatory requirement for off-site provision for an existing school is an unjustifiable stretch in any case. Even more so, when you consider that typically Cotham has only used about 10% of Stoke Lodge for less than 10% of daylight hours annually.
But it seems that part of the game is that Cotham School doesn’t really want to do PE at Stoke Lodge anyway; it is keen to find an alternative site. And so just three days later Sandra Fryer told John Smith (email here):
6-7 hectares is 15+ acres (not the whole of Stoke Lodge). Using the correct figures would point to just over 10 acres, and even that is in no sense a requirement (or even a relevant number). And note that in this email Sandra Fryer claims that Cotham has 1,650 students not 1,700. It’s hard to keep up, isn’t it.
One other point of interest from that email – Ms Fryer is keen to make some demands of the school’s landlord, BCC:
Let’s just pause a minute and remember that the only reason that BCC pays for tree and boundary maintenance at Stoke Lodge under the lease is that this was agreed in recognition of ongoing community use of the field – ‘all existing rights and use… including use by the community’. BCC doesn’t do this for other academy schools. Putting up a fence to restrict and exclude the community in breach of that deal, and then demanding a service level agreement and more money to be spent by the Council on the trees and walls on site, comes across as pretty entitled. Other schools might want to take note of the ever-increasing demands Cotham School is making of BCC. And both parties need to take a long, hard (and better-informed) look at the lease.
We need to talk about Stoke Lodge 