Nigel Martin

A very well-attended meeting hosted by the Schools Adjudicator was held last night at the Crossgate Moor site to hear objections to and arguments about the admissions criteria the County Council has proposed for the school.

There were presentations by David Williams, County Director of Children’s Services, Vanessa Kind, a parent governor at St Margaret’s School and Gail McCardle a paretn from Shincliffe. The meeting was then opened up for general comment and debate. In all, the meeting  lasted more than 2 hours.

Although I arrived late (I had to host a couple of hundred people at college - graduates and their families) I did hear all the debate from the floor.

It is clear that there is a strong level of concern among families in Neville’s Cross about admissions criteria which give preference to those living at a distance over those who live close by.

While there was some evidence offered suggesting that the risk to local families of being refused admission was low, I and most local residents were not convinced. I spoke and referred to the significant increase in new houses in the area which would undoubtedly start to impact on the situation in a few years. There had been a serious problem in the mid 1990s and the likelihood of this recurring gave me grave concern.

In addition, I was told by a resident that the demographic data used by the County was well out of date and that there was academic evidence of a recent population increases in the Durham area.

One issue referred to several times was the lack of real opportunity for local people to comment on the proposals before they were agreed.

While the County Councillor for Durham South claimed that he had ‘consulted local people’ I find that hard to believe as the final proposals only emerged in Mid March when we were all getting ready for the local elections. Indeed, we had about 7 days between the committee papers being published and the meeting at which things were due to be decided (although the decisions was deferred for a few weeks because of division in the Labour Group - see an earlier posting).

In reality, the process adopted by the County Council has always effectively excluded local residents, something accepted by the Director at the end of the meeting.

Nonetheless, I hope I am enough in touch with my local people to have a pretty good idea how they feel about this issue (and it was raised on the doorstep in the local election campaign) and the minutes of the County Cabinet show that I did represent them.

So what next? The Adjudicator will consider the matter and give his decision in about 10 days. He has wide powers including setting the admission criteria himself for up to the next three years. So look out for the result here, which will be posted as soon as I have it.