Strathaven Academy
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-4103, in the name of Margaret Mitchell, on Strathaven academy. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament congratulates Strathaven Academy on its selection to represent central Scotland at the Youth Forum to be held at the Scottish Parliament on 7 and 8 May 2006; recognises the excellent extra-curricular activities currently offered at Strathaven Academy; expresses concern that these activities will be curtailed during the proposed decant of the school to Crosshouse Campus in East Kilbride whilst a new school is built on the existing Strathaven Academy site; expresses further concern at reports of asbestos being present on the Crosshouse Campus; notes that no consultation has been held regarding the possibility of locating Strathaven Academy on a new site, and considers that South Lanarkshire Council should enter into a consultation, which should include the option to consider locating the school on an alternative site which would enable the Scottish Executive's target of two hours of physical education per pupil per week by 2008 to be met.
I welcome to the Scottish Parliament members of Strathaven academy action group, who are watching the debate on the monitors. I thank members who have taken the trouble to attend the debate. A reasonably high number of members are present, which is indicative of the interest and concern that the motion has generated. I received apologies from a number of MSPs, including James Douglas-Hamilton, Alex Neil and Eleanor Scott and from Carolyn Leckie, who had hoped to speak in the debate. Rosemary Byrne is here for the start of the debate but must leave early.
Strathaven academy action group and the community strongly support South Lanarkshire Council's decision to replace the aging Strathaven academy with a new-build school. However, the current proposal is not the one that the council first mooted and consulted on and the location of the new school was never discussed, which is crucial. Early in 2003, the council stated in its consultative document that it proposed to refurbish and part rebuild the school on the existing site and issued a questionnaire on the proposal to pupils' parents, associate primary schools, church representatives and other stakeholders.
However, in February 2005 the council decided that Strathaven academy should be completely rebuilt on the existing site and appointed InspirED as the preferred bidder for the project. No opportunity was given to pupils' parents and the community to consider an alternative site or to consult on the new proposal. Instead, in March 2005 the council merely held a road show at which parents could comment on plans for the new Strathaven academy, which were made available in the local library. In response to questions, some information was given about the transport arrangements that would be needed because the pupils would have to be decanted to the Ballerup high school site at the Crosshouse campus in East Kilbride. Although the council had no statutory duty formally to consult on the decision to undertake a completely new build of the school, because construction would take place on the existing site, it was high-handed and arrogant of the council not to give parents and others the opportunity properly to consider the merits of the decision.
In August 2005 a planning application for the new Strathaven academy was approved by the council's planning committee, which ignored the fact that the action group had identified an alternative site for the new school. The action group regarded the alternative site as a better option in terms of cost, design and accommodation for staff and pupils. Moreover, sports facilities could be created at the site that would ensure that the Executive's target of two hours of physical education per pupil per week could be met, which the proposal that was approved in August 2005 would not do. Had the alternative site been approved, there would be no need to decant the children, who could continue their education at the existing site until the new school was built and ready for occupation.
As a result of the council's refusal to consider the alternative site and halt the decision to press ahead with plans to build on the existing site, which were approved before the statutory process of consultation on decant arrangements had been properly carried out, the council is in breach of the Education (Publication and Consultation Etc) (Scotland) Regulations 1981 (SI 1981/1558), which say that parents and other key stakeholders must be consulted about decant arrangements and that consultation
"shall take the form of a notification being issued by an education authority to every parent being a notification in which the authority shall include a statement outlining the proposal"
or part of the proposal. The regulations go on to say that the authority should
"state an address to which representations … may be submitted to the authority within … a period of not less than 28 days from the date upon which the notification is … deemed to have been received by a parent".
From the letter of 27 March 2006 to me from South Lanarkshire Council's chief executive, it is clear that no such consultation took place. I doubt whether the Executive realised that when it approved the council's application and I invite the minister to comment on that and to say what can now be done to ensure that the council revisits its decision to approve the new build on the existing site.
That is no mere technical detail. The disruption that the decant will cause to the education of pupils at the academy and to the excellent after-school activities that are in place, as outlined in the motion, together with the legitimate concerns about transport arrangements and the state of Crosshouse campus, on which asbestos has been found, are germane and crucial to the standard of education that the authority can provide to pupils in Strathaven.
I ask the minister to take the opportunity to direct South Lanarkshire Council to think again and to go back to the drawing board to ensure that proper consideration is taken of the proposal to build Strathaven academy on an alternative site.
I apologise to you, Presiding Officer, and to Margaret Mitchell for unavoidably having to leave early. It is good that Margaret Mitchell has secured the debate. She ably outlined her views on the problems that have occurred and on how South Lanarkshire Council has behaved.
I will speak just as someone who lives in Strathaven and who has tried to facilitate discussions between the council and Strathaven academy action group, which has proved hard. That is unfortunate. The council has been intransigent on the matter and I have received disingenuous letters from it. For example, back in March, the council said that the action group had never submitted its plans but, at that point, the action group was looking for a meeting at which it could ask for its plans to be considered. Such an approach does no one any good and creates the perception that local democracy has been bypassed. In relation to this case and others, I would like South Lanarkshire Council to be more amenable to discussing matters with people who are most directly affected.
I know that Strathaven academy action group's plan has now been submitted to the council. I say honestly, as I have to the group, that I do not know whether that is a really good option or a brilliant plan or whether it has been properly costed. I do not pretend to have the technical expertise that would allow me to make such judgments. However, the important point is that surely a local authority should not be dictatorial in how it deals with local people. The council should sit down to consider that plan and perhaps others, because a solution that would suit everyone might be out there. I would like that discussion to take place; it is not too late for that.
I am not a parent and I do not have children at Strathaven academy, but I live in Strathaven and I am constantly approached by people who have grave concerns, which I share, about the two-year decant. Not least of the concerns is the bussing for two years of the academy's entire roll into and back from the Ballerup high school site in East Kilbride every day. That will involve using a horrible road—the A726 is not a good road. I do not want to be a scaremonger, but parents have huge concerns about their children going back and forth along that road every day. I have asked parliamentary questions about the road, which have shown that there is some confusion. One answer says that the route is a trunk road and another says that it is a local road. However, both answers show that no safety audit has been undertaken and that the Executive knows of no safety audit that is to be undertaken on that stretch of the A726. I ask the minister to take that on board and to ask his colleagues with relevant responsibility to ensure that the safety audit happens, because that road is notorious to those of us who live in the area.
Timing is another issue. Strathaven academy educates not only children who live in Strathaven town centre, but children who live in Avondale and the outlying areas. Those areas really are outlying. At the moment, youngsters from places such as Drumclog and further out, on the farms, are getting picked up before 8 o'clock in the morning to get to Strathaven academy in time for 9 o'clock. When they have to add on the extra time for the decanting into East Kilbride, what on earth time are we expecting children to get up in the morning in order to attend school?
Extra-curricular activities may well be missed. I noted in the local paper that South Lanarkshire Council has said that it will take steps to ensure that extra-curricular activities are not affected. With the best will in the world, I cannot see how the plan will not have some effect on extra-curricular activities.
I am aware of the time, so I will close shortly and allow others to speak, but another part of Margaret Mitchell's motion mentions that pupils from Strathaven academy have been selected to represent central Scotland at the Parliament on Sunday and Monday. Margaret gave them her congratulations, as do I. Strathaven academy is a marvellous school, and all of us who live in that community are very proud of it. It is not often that I say anything terribly nice about Andy Kerr. I know that, as a minister, he cannot speak in this debate, but I also know that he thinks very highly of Strathaven academy, as do all of us who live in the town. We are very proud that the pupils are coming to Edinburgh this weekend. We do not want any of the good work that Strathaven academy does being eroded by some of the plans that South Lanarkshire Council sadly seems to have and refuses to consider altering.
I have been in this place for only three years, but the Strathaven academy action group presented me with the document that I now have with me. It is the most lucid description of the anger of the parents of the children who go to Strathaven academy. Their children will have to travel the road between Strathaven and East Kilbride on a daily basis.
I come from that neck of the woods, and I can assure members that the road is dangerous: there is a cottage on a corner whose wall was repaired every month for many years before a slight alteration was made to the road. Seemingly, that problem has now been solved, but what if there was a snap frost in the winter and 800 children were travelling that road?
If one child was injured or, worse, killed due to the decanting, how could the people who are forcing the situation upon the people of Strathaven live with themselves? The authors of the document finish up by saying—I will be brief, because I have a train connection to try to make:
"We have shown that there are many reasons – educational, environmental and financial – why the South Lanarkshire Council plan should not be allowed to proceed as planned and that an alternative site in the town should be evaluated. We have presented a coherent and economical alternative.
South Lanarkshire Council refuse to even consider any alternative to their own plan. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that South Lanarkshire Council are now operating to a special agenda, one that does not necessarily have the best interests of Avondale at its heart."
That is a terrible statement to have to make. It is all about basic democracy. People are doing what we in the Parliament want them to do: they are putting up a coherent case.
The authors of the document mention Bowling Green Road. There is a little house there, which is featured in a photograph in the document. A friend of mine stayed there for a number of years. Two vehicles could not pass each other there, yet it is to be the main access to the school that is going to be built. It is incredible that the council can be so obdurate and stubborn and can fail to listen to people. All the people want is what this place is so famous for: consultation. They should be granted a consultation and another look at the matter. Please let us not have people going up and down that road between East Kilbride and Strathaven. Possibly, someone would live to regret that.
This is an important issue to debate. It is a typical hot local issue that involves local people who have been working hard for a long time and who have put forward a good case, which seems to have been neglected by the local council.
I agree with what other members have said, but I want to follow up one or two points that John Swinburne made. A proposal to decant from one school building to another is always a sensitive issue for local parents and local communities. The relevant council must therefore go an extra mile in consulting and ensuring that it carries public opinion with it, but it is clear that South Lanarkshire Council has failed to do that in the case that we are discussing.
One will never keep everyone happy all the time, but if there is a strong force of opinion, an alternative practical plan and concerns about the council's plan, there must be much more consultation. I strongly urge South Lanarkshire Council to be seen to be consulting people properly and to be taking account of what they say, and hope that the minister will put pressure on it to do so.
We must try to improve our arrangements for local democracy. The local council is the main vehicle for local democracy and local councils have great legitimacy—they have as much legitimacy in their own way as the Scottish Parliament—as a result of being elected to look after people's interests. However, councils can cover large areas and can sometimes, like other groups of people, get things wrong. A mechanism is needed for focusing strong local opinions.
Whether community councils can be given more real power to put cases to elected councils and to fight their corner with more strength or another approach can be taken is a matter for discussion, but we must work out a way of having really local democracy. We do not want groups that will be taken over by a few nimbys or a few people who have a bee in their bonnet. If we can better represent what are clearly strong local opinions and have a vehicle through which such opinions can be legitimately put to councils, a great step forward will have occurred.
Power tends to gravitate to the centre, whether to Europe, to London, to Edinburgh or to councils at the local level, but we must try to spread power out and give local communities a real say. I hope that the debate will help the Executive to think that idea out more fully and that the minister will put pressure on South Lanarkshire Council to consult people properly so that there is a solution with which most people can go along.
I thank Margaret Mitchell for lodging the motion. The design and building of our schools and consultation are extremely important subjects. I am not a local member for the area in question, so I will make general comments rather than comment on the particularities of the situation in Strathaven.
It must be a concern for the Executive—it is certainly a concern for me—that there has been a flawed consultation exercise. Seven years after the Parliament was established, consultation exercises should be of the highest quality. I would go as far as to say that people should look at what has been going on at Acharacle in the Highlands. The primary school children who are going to move into the new school that is being built there have been consulted and have submitted their own ideas on the design of the school. Such a process would be appropriate for secondary schools and in Strathaven in particular.
My second point is about design and the advice that is available to community groups, parents and others on new public and private buildings in Scotland. I would like the Executive to be proactive. Groups should be made aware of the good advice that exists on the procurement and design of schools and general advice on the design of buildings. We should ensure that parents of school pupils know that such advice is available. I think that page 35 of planning advice note 67, which I recommend as reading to everybody, has advanced thinking beyond what is in the regulations. Often, people do not know that the documents that the Executive has carefully prepared exist—indeed, one sometimes thinks that councils do not know that they exist, judging by how they go about procuring and proceeding with public-private partnership projects.
There are some very good PPP projects, where people have clearly read the advice and are moving forward with good, high-quality constructions. In other areas, it is clear that people on the council have not read or have deliberately ignored the advice that is available to them, and have engaged companies to construct buildings that will hold people back. Two, three, four, five, six or seven generations of children and teachers will live and work in substandard accommodation. There is no necessity for that in this day and age.
I recommend that the Executive review its relations with the 32 local councils anddo everything possible to impress on them that they should adopt the highest standards of procurement, building and consultation whenever they engage in the building of new schools.
Like other members, I congratulate Margaret Mitchell on securing this debate on the subject of Strathaven academy. I also congratulate Margaret, Linda Fabiani and others who have spoken on the modest and reasoned way in which they put their argument.
I know well that Strathaven academy is a popular school that is highly regarded by local parents. My colleague Andy Kerr, who is sitting beside me and is the local member, has three children who either are or will be at the school. Obviously, he takes a personal interest in what is taking place there. I add my congratulations to the sixth-year pupils from Strathaven on being selected to take part in the "Our voice in Europe" forum that will be held in the Parliament in a few days' time, which is mentioned in Margaret Mitchell's motion. I appreciate that that has not been the centrepiece of today's debate, but it is important to refer to it, as it underlines the value that the school offers to the local community and the way in which it has been able to contribute.
I am well aware that the main focus of Margaret Mitchell's motion is South Lanarkshire Council's school rebuilding and refurbishment programme and its proposed temporary location of the pupils and staff of Strathaven academy elsewhere, while the existing building is replaced by a new building on the same site. Like other members, especially Linda Fabiani, I am not in a position to comment centrally on the suitability or otherwise of the action group's proposed site. Ultimately, that is a matter for engagement between the council and local people. However, I would like to comment in more general terms on the background to the replacement of the school, in order to put the issue in context.
The replacement has come about because we are in the middle of a huge programme to improve Scotland's school buildings through a combination of public-private partnership projects and work carried out through other procurement routes. South Lanarkshire Council's PPP project is the largest in the current round of projects and will see 17 new-build secondary schools and two refurbishments when the project is completed in 2009. I have some local knowledge of the issue, because I live in South Lanarkshire and have seen part of the project in the Rutherglen area.
South Lanarkshire Council is also carrying out a major programme of work on its primary schools, outwith the PPP project, which will see 69 new-build schools and the refurbishing of the rest. That illustrates the variety of funding options that are available to local authorities for the improvement of school estates; the scale of the legacy of poor school buildings that was left by previous Governments; and the extent of the resources that have been made available by the Scottish Executive.
Whether schools are procured under PPP or under other arrangements, it is for local authorities to identify their priorities, to specify what their requirements are and to take account of the wider public interests that there may be in any development proposal involving a school. A number of members have made the point that consultation and engagement with local people are very much part of that process. Scotland's young people are our future and will benefit hugely from the extent of school renewal across Scotland and the substantial investment that we have made in teachers, both through the McCrone settlement and through increased teacher numbers.
We cannot have such a level of engagement in building work without sometimes having temporary effects at a local level. I know that local authorities and others who are involved in building and refurbishing schools will and should be mindful of the need to keep disruption to a minimum. I stress the major point that has been made in today's debate, which concerns the importance of engagement and consultation. I have no doubt that the council will take note of the points that have been made both by the action group and in the debate by members.
Wherever possible, councils try to put new buildings on another part of the school site or on another site. From my experience, I know that that approach is not always universally welcomed and that it depends on the suitability and availability of other sites. That is what will happen with most of South Lanarkshire's new builds, but the council says that there are limitations that mean that the school at Strathaven will have to be vacated and demolished before the new school can be built on the site. That is a decision for the council and not something that I as a minister should comment on. I take the view that as a matter of principle, local decisions are for local elected representatives to make. I am told that the decision on the matter was supported by all parties on the council, including by the then—now late—Conservative councillor in the area. We cannot know centrally all the local circumstances that inform local decisions of that kind.
I appreciate from some of the comments made today that there is some dispute about whether the decision was made correctly in this case, but if such a decision is made correctly, the council needs to make local parents aware of the ins and outs of the detailed arrangements for transport and buses—something like 40 buses will be involved in this case—and to engage with them and reassure them about any concerns.
I have listened carefully to all the concerns that have been expressed today and I understand that people are worried about the impact of the decant to East Kilbride. As was mentioned, the Strathaven academy action group recently made a submission to the council setting out those concerns and outlining its view that other sites in Strathaven might be suitable for the new school that would avoid the need for decant. That is a matter for the council to address.
Finding new sites for schools, or for other types of public services, gives rise to all sorts of considerations, not least about how, at what cost, and over what timescale land might be acquired, and any planning permission issues. In Strathaven's case, there might be links with other parts of the PPP project with which the council is concerned.
If the minister is not able to address today what I believe was a breach of the consultation process in relation to the decant, will he undertake to do so at a future date? Will he outline what can be done to rectify the situation if it is proved that a breach took place?
Although I was coming to that point later in my speech, I will deal with it immediately. My advice from officials is that under the Education (Publication and Consultation Etc) (Scotland) Regulations 1981, formal consultation is required on the discontinuance of a school and the change of site of a school. Authorities do not normally regard a decant as being a discontinuance or change of site under the 1981 regulations. There might be different views, but that is the advice that I have on the matter. We consider a decant to be a temporary relocation rather than a permanent one because the site of the school remains unchanged. However, if Margaret Mitchell has other views, I will be happy to hear further from her.
The council has said that it will look at the final submission, although it also said that the PPP procurement is well advanced and all the necessary planning is in place for the decant.
We cannot comment on the detail because we do not have the local knowledge, but we hope that an outcome will be reached that reflects the local circumstances, the various pressures on the council and the wider interests that the council should take into account in the light of its responsibilities for the delivery of education across the whole area. Among those is its accountability to local people. The council's responsibilities include responsibility for the health and safety of pupils and staff—I am aware of the alleged asbestos in the building—and transport. I expect that the council will take those responsibilities seriously and do all that it can to sustain provision of the extra-curricular activities that are so important in the life of our schools.
Ultimately, it is the job of local authorities to devise the best plans for their areas and to manage the implementation of those plans effectively. As Donald Gorrie rightly said, they are accountable to their electorates for that, as we are in our sphere.
Temporary dislocations of this kind are always difficult. They have occurred in a number of council areas for similar reasons and can be worrying for parents. It might be of some comfort that the children usually seem to be less concerned, and indeed regard it as a bit of an adventure. However, I accept that it will be a long decant from Strathaven and that the council will want to ponder certain concerns and continue to discuss them with local people.
The central concern in this matter is about consultation. I am grateful to people for putting their views in a modest fashion. I hope that the council listens to the debate, responds if possible to the views that have been put and tries to give what satisfaction it can to the parents involved.
I will finish by returning to the main theme, although I realise that that will be no comfort for those who have to deal with the immediate day-to-day issues. Our huge investment in education, particularly in the school infrastructure, will make a huge difference to and lead to a step change in the life chances of children throughout Scotland, not least those in Strathaven. These children are our future—and, indeed, Scotland's future—and deserve to have these matters taken seriously. I am grateful to Margaret Mitchell for securing what has been an excellent debate.
Meeting closed at 17:45.