Cheshire East Council has been forced to scrap plans for an alternative provision school in Crewe because the DfE won’t engage with the council over a timeline for the scheme, writes Belinda Ryan.
The children and families committee voted in favour of pulling the plug on plans to demolish the former Crewe Baths at Flag Lane and replace it with a school for excluded pupils.
The council will instead accept £3.465 million (high needs capital grant) offered by the Department for Education over three years to provide the extra provision in schools with unused space.
Councillors were told by officers that all attempts to get a definitive answer from the DfE on a timeline for the Flag Lane proposal had failed.
Cllr Jos Saunders (Poynton, Con) said: “I find it absolutely outrageous that the DfE are not engaging.
“It states in the paper that there’s been little engagement since the general election in 2024. What on earth is that about?
“I actually find that not only disappointing but it’s insulting to this council.”
The AP school was to have been run by the YES Trust, which operates the only approved school in the borough – the Fermain Academy in Macclesfield.
Cllr Saunders said: “I actually think the huge risk to this council is not actually going ahead with Flag Lane.
“I have been to Fermain School. I have seen the work that they do there.
“We know that if young people are excluded from school, the likelihood of them coming back into mainstream education is often very small, and that has not only a huge impact on their own personal lives, but it also has an impact on the community as well.”
Helen Wallace, the council’s head of education, said there was little doubt everyone at the meeting wanted to see the Flag Lane school go ahead as originally planned.
But she said it could be “a really, really significant amount of time until we get an answer (from the DfE)”.
“Flag Lane has too many question marks for us in terms of those costs and keeping the site for an unknown amount of time,” said Mrs Wallace.
Cllr Dawn Clark (Crewe, Lab) said: “I think we’re in that situation where we need to take the funding to enable provision to be increased across Cheshire East.”
She said Cheshire East also needed to protect the Flag Lane building.
Committee chair Laura Crane (Sandbach, Lab) said: “The problem we have is that the DfE is not coming to us and saying you can have your funding and we’ll get this delivered in the next couple of years.
“I think if that were what we were hearing back from DfE – that two years from now there would be shovels in the ground, I don’t think we’d be having the same conversation.
“The problem we have is that it’s some time down the line.
“That’s the issue that I cannot get past, and no matter how hard I try to get an answer (from the DfE) … the answers we’re getting back are, it isn’t going to be two years down the line or three.”
Eight councillors voted in favour of scrapping the Flag Lane school proposal and accepting the £3.465 million in high needs capital grant funding from the Department for Education which will be used on improving inclusion in mainstream schools.
(pic by Dave Bevis on creative commons licence)
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