School to be bulldozed in plan for new homes
WORK is due to begin to demolish a former Southport primary school, with a developer keen to build 40 new homes on the land.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool has submitted a prior notification application for the demolition of the former St John Stone RC Primary School, on Meadow Lane, in Ainsdale.
The school closed in September, 2006, to the dismay of parents and pupils, after more than 33 years serving the local community.
Details of the demolition scheme have been lodged with Sefton Council’s planning department.
Contractor Sloyan Doyle Demolition is due to begin the work on July 10, with the scheme completed by August 7.
Giving their reasons for levelling the site, the Archdiocese said: “The building is now no longer used and therefore exposed to arson and vandalism.”
Non-hazardous demolition waste (scrap timber,
will be taken by skips to a landfill facility.
Brickwork and concrete will be transported by tipper lorries for recycling by crushing at the contractor’s recycling centre at Simonswood.
All asbestos materials have already been removed from the buildings on the site.
Plans to demolish the school were criticised by Ainsdale councillor Haydn Preece last year.
He said: “At a time when we are being pressurised in increasing our population via building new houses we are, as a village, losing a secondary school site and a primary school and – guess what – in the next decade we will be searching for land to replace both.”
The site is among those earmarked for new homes in Sefton Council’s Local Plan, which is currently entering its final stages of completion.
The Plan, which would see 11,600 new homes built across Sefton, also includes proposals for the construction of 243 new homes on the site of the former Ainsdale High School.
In 2007, governors blamed the fall in the number of pupils on the roll on “demographic factors”.
They said the establishment could not provide an effective education for the few remaining children.
They added that population changes in the area had caused the number of pupils on the roll to fall from 155 to 109.
Speaking at the time of St John Stone’s closure, mum Tracey Rossiter said: “I feel very upset and let down by the education system.
“St John Stone Catholic Primary is such a lovely school, it is really friendly. The children are devastated.”
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