So many houses, so few schools

It’s a worry voiced many times, but still there is no solution on the horizon. Urged on by the government, local authorities across the country are adopting ambitious housing targets.

Building more homes is the only way to solve a perceived housing shortage, we are told.

But time and again local communities say they can’t absorb more homes without more infrastructure.

The biggest worry for parents of course is schooling. Already a great many students have to make ridiculously long journeys to get to school.

It’s waste of their time – and their parents’ money, with many lowincome families struggling to pay the ever-rising fares.

But with Maidstone aiming to build 18,560 homes by 2031, and Tonbridge and Malling chipping in with another 13,460, the question now becomes will there be a school for their children to go to at all? KCC says no. There are plans for several new primaries, and extensions to an existing grammar school, but only one new secondary school across Maidstone, Tonbridge and Malling and Tunbridge Wells.

That’s 800 new places to educate all the teenage children from all those new homes.

KCC says it only has enough capacity to cope until 2019. After that, there will be more children needing a secondary school than there are places available.

The often-expressed hope is that, as the new homes are built, developers will provide the finance for new schools.

Even if that happens, it inevitably means that the schools will trail several years behind the houses. Parents will find that unacceptable.

Two years’ disrupted education is two years’ education that can never be replaced.

We are with those who say build the infrastructure first – then the homes.