Mary Reid

This term kicked off with a new school in the Neighbourhood. Buckland Infants and Moor Lane Juniors have amalgamated to form Castle Hill Primary. The school officially opened two weeks ago.

Now there are lots of sound educational reasons for preferring an all-through primary school to separate infant and junior schools - the whole teaching team can work together to provide a suitable education for each child as they progress through the years - so when the opportunity arose with the retirement of one of the headteachers the Council was wise to make this happen.

The new school is still operating on the two sites, which are only a few minutes walk from each other, but one of the two sites must now be chosen as its eventual home. There are issues to be tackled whichever site is selected, but the Council is proposing that Buckland should be it.  A consultation document has gone out to 2500 homes.

On Thursday a public meeting was held, when questions were asked about traffic in Buckland Road, the playing field at Moor Lane, and what the Moor Lane site will be used for. There will be another chance to discuss this at our South of the Borough Neighbourhood meeting next Tuesday (23rd), starting 7.30pm at the Hook Centre.

If Buckland is finally chosen as the site for Castle Hill, then I'm prepared to make the following commitments:

• the Moor Lane site will be used for services to children and to families
• no part of either site will be sold to developers
• the playing field at Moor Lane will remain as the playing field for the new school; in fact, we would like its use to be extended to the wider community
• a pedestrian entrance in Mount Road would encourage walking to school; no extra parking would be allowed in Mount Road
• the use of the swimming pool at Moor Lane will continue as at present
• we will encourage the school and parents to introduce walking buses to reduce car use