The public meeting on Thursday afternoon (18 July) at which London Borough of Enfield (LBE) officers outlined ideas for building a new school on part of the historic parkland of the former Grovelands House revealed considerable hostility to the idea among the packed audience.  In actual fact, the concepts described would largely use land which does not form part of the current Grovelands Park, would seek to make any new buildings inconspicuous, and in any case would require approval from English Heritage, who regard the parkland as a particularly interesting and valuable national asset.

Palmers Green Community's Colin Younger was at the meeting and has provided the following commentary, plus photographs of displays of two of the concepts.

Given the pressures on school places it was perhaps surprising that the meeting called by LBE on Thursday afternoon to discuss their initial thoughts about possible sites for a primary school in Grovelands Park was so uniformly hostile. One muttered comment from the floor I heard was to the effect that there was no problem, "Enfield has lots of schools".

Parents in and around Palmers Green are only too aware that many live in a “black hole” as regards access to their nearest schools. Proposals, however tentative, for a possible primary school in parts of Grovelands Park not currently accessible or easily visible might have been expected to be welcomed and supported. I suspect that LBE did themselves no favours in this respect. It seems to me that they probably limited the publicity for the meeting to residents close to the Park, though they would have needed a much bigger venue to accommodate all interested parties had they gone wider, and a UN Peace Keeping force to keep that audience under control.

 

This is a complicated story and Gary Barnes, who has been reviewing land holdings where school expansion was even a remote possibility, could barely get a complete idea on the table before being attacked by critics. LBE has been looking at possible sites for new schools for some time, and parts of the Grovelands Park “estate” have been tentatively identified as “possibles”. The concepts, not plans, will be on the Enfield website at some point. LBE stress these are only two possible and undeveloped ideas, they are a very long way from firm proposals.

Grovelands Park is a Grade II* listed landscape with the Grade I Grovelands House at its centre. However, it has been on the English Heritage “At Risk” register because its management was split between LBE, the Priory and Thames Water who had bought land as a potential site for a covered reservoir.  It’s doubtful whether many visitors are aware of how extensive the Park is. There is much more space available for example than the existing site of Walker School. But because the Park is so sensitive LBE will need to satisfy English Heritage that the historic landscape will not be damaged and that a comprehensive management plan can protect it. 

This means that they have to carry out a comprehensive survey of the Park which will take about six months. What they have done so far is to commission some conceptual designs of how a school might be accommodated, sports facilities renewed and park vistas improved. They argue that there is no point in spending more, eg on expensive traffic surveys, until English Heritage have had a chance to consider such concepts.  Other things being equal, LBE were clear that they would not have held the meeting about such tentative plans, but the opposition probably made this impossible for it to be kept in-house. Discussions have taken place with Thames Water about acquiring their land and we have to assume that this is a possibility, but their price is commercially confidential as of now.

There is going to be a fight. Even before English Heritage have given their view, an opposition group, the Grovelands Residents Association, is forming up. Jenny Tosh presented the educational need which Grovelands might meet, but so far as I could detect this audience was not mollified in its opposition.

There is more going on concerning local school sites, LBE are still in discussions with Walker School, and a real surprise, there are sensitive tentative negotiations going on with Southgate College over the old Minchenden School site. On no more basis than a guess on my part, could this be about a secondary school site? After all, the bulge in numbers won’t stop at primary school level!

Finally, there was a suggestion that Broomfield House could be used as a school.  I squashed that proposal – there is a well worked out plan for use of the House to include educational facilities, but the House is a non-starter as a school, but that’s another story.

This report was modified on 31 July 2013, removing the poor quality images, as better versions are now available - see this later report.