Surbiton Hospital site is vastly underutilised and is probably the only remaining central Surbiton site large enough to accommodate a new school.

Recently, over a period of months, I brought my son to speech therapy at the Surbiton Hospital site. I was gobsmacked at the size of the site, when compared to the relativly insignificant buildings. The car park was never more than half full.

A small building offering local health services does not need such a huge site.
There’s no reason why a smaller site in central Surbiton could not contain a replacement building for any local health services that do not need to be located at Kingston hospital.

As stated elsewhere in this thread, there is a real and growing primary schools crisis. Surely nobody in Surbiton supports the forced displacement of four year old pupils to schools as far away as Knollmead (4km)and Malden Manor(6km).

I don’t think that providing a new school at the Tolworth roundabout, as you suggest, would be seen as a reasonable solution by most parents of four year old chiildren.

Parents have an expectation of getting a place in one of their neighbouring schools,
not in their sixth or seventh nearest. Moreover, in an urban area like ours, most pupils should realistically expect to be within a 15/20 minutes walking distance of a primary school place- not a 45 minute bus trip (or trips).

I should highlight that ultimately, this is every house owner’s problem, not just parents of prospective primary school children.

If RBK are to persist with their attempt to provide non-local places for Surbiton and Berrylands children then, realistically, many prospective parents will move elsewhere. This will have a consequent negative effect on Surbiton’s desirability, and by extension house prices.

The no provision zone since 2004 has been the area
east of Surbiton Station,
north of Surbiton Lawn Tennis Club,
south of Cranes Park Avenue.

Last year, children in this zone only got local school places because RBK provided temporary bulge classes in Maple Infants and Christchurch, ie in schools straddling the Surbiton/North Berrylands area.

This year, RBK is providing these places in Knollmead and Tolworth. Provision of permanent places in Grand Avenue is certainly preferable to being shunted 4km to Knollmead, but Grand Avenue’s location is still not central to the problem area.

RBK doesn’t operate the principle of nearest community school. This results in boundaries stetching to ensure that no-one falls into a no coverage zone. The ultimate RBK criteria is distance.

Expanding Grand Avenue without introducing a nearest community school clause would increase its catchment area equally in all directions. It is probable that the expanded Grand Avenue will cover some, but not all, of the current no coverage zone. In particular, roads north of the railway line might not be covered. At the same time, people in the south of the Surbiton educational planning zone, who already have more than ample choice of schools would get even more.

This is because the catchment area expands equally in all directions, rather than being skewed towards the areas of no coverage. The end result could be empty places in Knollmead and Tolworth, as parents there take the new places because Grand Avenue is perceived as a better school.

Its time RBK copied other LA’s and introduced the concept of nearest community school – this would ensure that no significant minorities would be faced with unreasonable cross borough commutes of 45 minutes or more, four times per day.

It would be the only way of guaranteeing that any new places at Grand Avenue would be of the benefit of those faced with travelling to Knollmead form Cranes Park actually get the places that were intended for them.

Expanding Grand Avenue without such a clause is only a partial solution. As before those, furthest from their nearest community school would yet again be shunted to the far south side of the borough. The only real difference is that there would be fewer of them. The problem of unfairness would not have been addressed.

In absence of a nearest community school clause, RBK needs to provide expanded permanent places closest to the location of the problem. The hospital site, on the north Berrylands / Surbiton border is as close to ideal as one could get. The large site has in-built flexibility to cope with any future surges in pupil numbers.

The location, beside Surbiton Station, would be a massive hit with commuter parents. The proximity would typically save parents at least half an hour a day as they wouldn’t have to do an additional drive to a school/nursery elsewhere. It could make Surbiton a wonderful town to commute from.

I should emphasise that this is not just an issue for parents of prospective pupils.

Word of the primary school shortage is already beginning to affect property prices in the affected areas. My wife had a midweek email from an acquaintance who was planning to buy in the Berrylands area. He is now having severe doubts because some streets won’t fall into the catchment area of any of our four neighbouring schools.

A personal friend today looked at a house in a wonderful street (my own!). She loved the house – its exactly what she’s been looking for all year. She decided not to bid, however, because she realises she needs to be living practically on top of Christchurch to get a place there. The irony is that Christchurch is so close as the crow flies that you can hear the kids in the playground, but still don’t fall within the catchment area.

Of course, none of this talk about permanent expansion will do any good for the Sep 2009 intake. RBK must reverse its unfair decision to locate the bulge classes in Knollmead and Tolworth, where there is clearly no evidence of any capacity shortages. The problem is undeniably in Surbiton and North Berrylands. The bulge classes should be provided as close to the problem areas as possible.

Unless it is possible to provide classes in a brand new site, the most acceptable option for the Sep 2009 intake is for St Matthews and Grand Avenue to expand.

Both schools should explain publicly why they are not taking bulge classes this year. RBK has so far refused to disclose why these schools, clearly with enough space to expand, and much closer to the problem area have not been chosen to host bulge classes. Maybe the councillors will have more success in getting an answer than concerned parents, who have been faced with a wall of silence. RBK must be hiding behind something shameful when they can’t produce any evidence, reason or rationale to support their crazy choice of Knollmead and Tolworth.

Any thoughts anyone?

I don’t think that the extra distance from maple Infants to the back of Surbiton station is a huge obstacle. Its certainly pales into insignificance when considering the distance from Chenye Hill / Hill Avenue to Malden manor or Knollmead.

The reality is that the Maple Infants site can not be expanded to meet the extra demand that exists in the locality. It has outlived its usefulness.

RBK missed a trick by not buying the vacant site next door. Yet more evidence of a lack of vision / strategy.

Redevelopment of the Surbiton Station car park could be predicated on improving over-railway connectivity, eg new footbridges, or even better, a road link from Victoria Road. This would make the Surbiton Hospital site even more accessible.

A school and nursery with enhanced capacity (and flexibility to expand in future), so close to Surbiton Station would be a hugely popular development for working parents across the whole of Surbiton.

Hopefully the intellectual agitilty exists to realise that we have two separate issues here:

1. Provision of extra places in time for Sep 2009, located closest to the areas of unmet demand(ie Surbiton & Berrylands).

2. Permanent expansion of primary and nursery school provision in Surbiton. This problem has been ongoing since 2004, and is getting worse every year.

The concerns most commentators have raised with me are that
(a) RBK officers and councillors have allowed a situation to develop whereby Surbiton can not provide sufficient school places for Surbiton children.
(b)it is either too costly or time consuming or both for parents to get to Knollmead from various parts of Surbiton and Berrylands ON A DAILY BASIS (ie not sporadically as per hospital vistis).

The reports I received were that NOT ONE COUNCILLOR could look the worried parent in the eye when he challenged them as to what they proposed to do about RBK’s outrageous decision to force Surbiton and Berrylands kids as far as Knollmead to get an education.

Lots of furtive downward glances and incoherent mumbling when the questioner then highlighted that only a couple of councillors had even bothered replying to emails on the issue.

What sort of public representatives have we got here, when they can’t recognise the seriousness of a situation where people may be forced to give up jobs/move house in the current economic climate?
All because RBK has failed to provide enough primary school places in Surbiton?

I missed the open questions at the start of the meeting, but arrived to see you guys entertain yourseleves with self-congratulatory jocularity about minor issues, eg what constitutes Tolworth.

You didn’t have much to say about your lack of action re the impending schools crisis.
How could this situation have been allowed to develop on your watch?

I’ve been told that primary school children in the Cheyne Hill area have been getting offers of places as far away as Malden Manor as far back as 2005.
What have you guys done to try and rectify this situation?

In the last three weeks, I’ve been in contact with the DCSF, have presented Ed Balls with notice that we are seeking a formal Determination of the legality of RBK’s actions, have been in touch with Liberty, British Humanist Association, Human Rights solicitors, the Office of Schools Adjudication, our local MP, oh and RBK’s Alice in Wonderland-esqu Admission section.

In that time, I haven’t received a reply from a conservative councillor that I contacted, nor from Helen Whately, whose office I contacted. That says it all frankly.

I also agree with you about the need for primary school places, though I’m not so sure if parents of children at Maple Infants would welcome a move to Ewell Road. However the places issue was raised at Neighbourhood twice on Wednesday, latterly by me suggesting that more be done with money raised locally in Section 106 planning agreements to provide extra places in Surbiton schools. Grand Avenue was one which had been mentioned from the floor of the meeting.

You are rather too cavalier with the health needs of Surbiton residents, however. The concerns most commentators have raised with me are that
(a) Kingston Hospital just can’t take on the workload currently carried out at Surbiton (and there is still quite a bit of OP work going on there) and that
(b)it is either too costly or time consuming or both to get to Kingston Hospital from various parts of Surbiton and Chessington.