Residents’ concern over school rebuild (From Echo)

Residents’ concern over school rebuild

5:30pm Tuesday 9th March 2010 in

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THE £40MILLION rebuild of two Thundersley schools has moved a step closer after plans were submitted to the council, but residents are not pleased.

Under the scheme Deanes School will be completely rebuilt and Glenwood School, currently in Rushbottom Lane, will be relocated on to the Deanes School site in Daws Heath Road.

The transformation will mean an extra 150 pupils travelling to the site every day on top of about 1,000 students already attending Deanes.

Residents living nearby are not happy about this.

They want planners to do more to tackle the congestion caused by the school which sees traffic build up around the Woodmans roundabout and along Rayleigh Road.

Pauline Leeks, 71, of Daws Heath Road, said: “It’s chaos at hometime. The buses slow the traffic and the roads around here just are not big enough.”

Back in September the council gazumped a buyer poised to purchase 86 Daws Heath Road, the property next to Deanes.

It is now proposing to demolish the house to widen the access to the school site to create a two lane access road and an extra drop-off point in the school grounds.

Brenda Head, 63, of Daws Heath Road, said: “The traffic is horrendous and if anything the new school is going to make it worse as there will be more pupils.

“It would have been better if they had put another entrance in Rayleigh Road or have a one-way in one-way out system.

“No one has got any objections to the school being rebuilt, it’s just the traffic it creates and the fact residents don’t seem to have been considered.”

Essex County Council has now applied for outline planning permission for the new building which will be built on part of the car park and games courts, facilities which will be replaced on the site of the existing school when it is knocked down.

Eventually all the existing school buildings, except the tennis centre, will be knocked down.

The school will be a mixture of two and three-storey buildings with the 150-pupil Glenwood School based on the ground floor for easy access.

The project is being funded by the Government’s Building Schools For the Future programme, which aims to rebuild or refurbish all the country’s schools.

Essex County Council spokeswoman Nicola Spicer said the council was aware of residents concerns about traffic and would listen to their views and take any necessary action.