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A cheap promise?
• IT is good news that the government has now promised to fund a new secondary school south of Euston Road, and particularly that this will be in addition to the new secondary school which Camden’s Lib Dem-led administration has already planned for Adelaide Road to provide much-needed school places for the north-west of the borough.
The government’s commitment to help meet the need for a new school in the south follows the insistence last year by Councillor John Bryant, the Liberal Democrat executive member for children, that Camden must continue to work on all possibilities for providing a new secondary school for the south.
Ed Balls, secretary of state, has now written: “… the department is happy to support Camden’s work on bringing forward proposals and… we would be willing to fund a new school in the south in addition to the current expected level of BSF [Building Schools for the Future] funding, as long as it could be demonstrated that places were needed”.
The only danger I see in this is that it will be a cheap promise to make unless a site can be acquired to build the new school. Perhaps the government would release some of the money it is getting for its sale of the Brill Place land (where Camden hoped to provide affordable housing), or perhaps there is some piece of government-owned land south of the Euston Road that can be used? It’s in everyone’s interests that the government should be held to making good its pledge.
ROBIN YOUNG
Bedford Avenue, WC1
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