Now showing: council plan for school on cinema site
A SECONDARY school could be built on the site of a cinema after a town hall dropped controversial plans in another location.
Manchester council papers say it is planning to buy the site of Showcase Cinemas in Belle Vue, a section of which would be its preferred location for a new high school.
The city’s school-age population grew by more than 2,000 in a year and the town hall said it needs to ensure the forecast demand for places is met.
Bosses hope the Hyde Road location will be open for a September 2021 start, according to council papers ahead of a children and young person’s scrutiny meeting.
It comes after the town hall dropped plans for a 1,200-place secondary school on Matthews Lane at Nutsford Vale in Gorton.
The council announced in 2018 that the school was no longer needed, and pointed to a string of government-approved secondaries at the time – even though it had already spent £4.4m preparing the land for it to be built.
Now new town hall papers say that following ‘detailed site investigations,’ building a school at land on Matthews Lane would have been too expensive, and would have ‘exceeded the Department for Education’s affordability measures.’ They argue that, instead, the school at Hyde Road would allow for improved access and say that the site is ‘well situated’ to meet the forecast demand for places. They add that the town hall ‘could not have anticipated’ that the Hyde Road site would become available when they were considering Matthews Lane as an option. The Gorton plan faced fierce opposition when it was first suggested by the council. Furious campaigners warned that the land was heavily relied upon by the local community and argued that it had taken them years to turn it into a green oasis.
Ward councillor Julie Reid said at the time that the council would not try such a plan ‘in Didsbury or Chorlton.’
Contaminants found in the land, which had been used as a tip until the 1980s, were also raised as a concern, but the council said they could be safely removed. The school was granted planning permission at a meeting in February 2018, when councillors were told the city was 330 places short for the following September.
But the plans were abruptly dropped when the town hall said that the school was no longer needed – because the government had approved a series of free schools that it had not factored in quickly enough.
It’s not clear how much it would cost to acquire the space on Hyde Road, but documents say: “The current forecast of unallocated Basic Need grant funding is £61m which, based on other similar projects, should be sufficient to fund the land acquisition, remediation and build costs for a new secondary school.”
The papers also say the town hall is working with developer Renaker on plans for a 210-place primary school in Castlefield.
A site in the Miles Platting and Newton Heath ward has been identified as potentially suitable for future education development.