Residents to the north and south of St Peter’s School in York have responded with universal praise for Bootham School’s plans for the former Bootham Park Hospital grounds.
As reported last week, the plans for the derelict former Bootham Park Hospital include a £2mn investment in landscaped parkland and two grass football pitches, creating a resource described by Bootham’s head teacher Chris Jeffrey as “for the benefit of the whole community”.
Neighbours to Bootham School will have access to an improved green space close to the city centre, enhancing the quality of life for residents, while simultaneously improving the sports facilities for Bootham School.
The image below shows St Peter’s plan to build acres of artificial floodlit pitches, store rooms/changing rooms and car parking on grass pitches on a zone 3 flood plain right in the heart of a quiet residential area.
Contrasting plans for the York schools
A resident living near St Peter’s school said:
“The contrast could not be starker. St Peter’s plan to turn open green spaces into a car park and artificial sports surfaces for a commercial business, and only say they ‘regret’ the negative impact of heavy traffic until 10pm for 52 weeks a year on a narrow residential street. They claim this development will ‘solve the traffic chaos’ currently affecting surrounding streets … chaos caused by their own uncontrolled expansion. Meanwhile, Bootham has a minibus service to help reduce traffic, and their sports expansion plan includes landscaped open green spaces that will be open to the community.”
Despite the fact that St Peter’s is the largest city-centre school by some way, they are alone in not having a viable, up-to-date travel plan showing how they will mitigate drawing more traffic into residential streets.
Previous expansions by St Peter’s have included a swimming pool (initially promised to allow access for public use but is now only available to hire as a venue with limited availability) and a promise made in 2003 that parents would be “walked” from the main entrance to St Anne’s when the public school adopted the former state school buildings (now its junior school, St Olave’s). It is estimated that there are now 1,500 car journeys per week through Queen Anne’s Road and North Parade to St Peter’s School.
Criticism of St Peter’s school plans
York’s transport, planning and the environment department’s report on the application criticised the plan’s potential impact on traffic and the school’s inadequate surveys in support of the application, condemned plans for an unsafe pedestrian crossing, and described the plan to replace grass verges with lay-bys as “unacceptable”.
Meanwhile, opposition to St Peter’s plans has been growing, with objections to the planning application submitted by Sport England, The Environment Agency, and the city of York’s flood risk management team, along with the criticism from York’s transport planning department.
Sport England’s objection has been singled out as significant, as it described the plans as having “minimal” value for the community, and even for England Hockey. While the plan will achieve St Peter’s objective of bringing school hockey on site, it will do so at the cost of cricket and rugby which will have to be moved elsewhere. In a move queried by the England and Wales Cricket Board in Sport England’s report into the proposals, crucially, they state “the true … value for community hockey is minimal”, and go on to say “should the local authority be minded to grant planning permission for the proposal, contrary to Sport England’s objection … the application should be referred to the secretary of state [for digital, culture, media and sport]”.
Lack of engagement
The resident said: “St Peter’s have a lot to learn from Bootham, which operates a minibus service to minimise the school’s impact on local roads. It is perfectly acceptable for St Peter’s to have plans to expand, but not at any cost. They should follow the lead of Bootham School and work for the benefit of their neighbours and surrounding community alongside their own objectives, rather than expecting neighbours to shoulder the burden for their benefit.”
