Claire Kelley’s Diary

Today I have seen a letter from Cynthia Welbourn, Director of North Yorkshire’s Children and Young People’s Service, confirming that the Council’s intention is to consult on changes to its admission arrangements for the September 2011 entry.

This is based on the contention that, having received the revised decision on the 2009 complaint  on 3 June and with the decision on the 2010 complaint expected in July, there is insufficient time to consult and introduce new criteria in time for the 2010 entry.

So Harrogate children will remain firmly at the end of the queue until at least 2011.

North Yorkshire’s prevarication and quibbling has been deeply disappointing and I am saddened to learn that they are taking this approach.   Had they listened to the view of Harrogate parents from the start instead of constantly putting up barriers to change, we would be much further down the road.

We look to the new executive member to bring about the change that Harrogate parents and their representatives have been demanding for many years.

Parents in Knaresborough have been shocked and dismayed to learn that their children, due to begin school in September, have been offered places at schools in Harrogate whilst places in Knaresborough are being taken by children from outside the town. 

Several Knaresborough families who applied for places at St John’s School have been told that their children are to be admitted to Starbeck Primary School.    So whilst parents from Knaresborough will be driving their four year olds over to Harrogate to go to school, other families from outside Knaresborough, will be driving their children in.   Madness.

I contacted the Area Education Office this morning and have been given the following explanation:

There are enough places in Knaresborough primary schools for all the children living in Knaresborough so this is not a capacity problem.   However, under the new admissions procedures parents who express a preference for a particular school are admitted before those who do not express a preference for it.   It’s easier to explain this with an example.

Family A live in the catchment of Good School, which is not oversubscribed, but they really want their child to go to Another Good School, which is also close, but has a different catchment.   They just enter Another Good School on their preference form.

Family B live 3 miles away, and they have included Good School on their preference form.   

Family A do not get a place at their choice, Another Good School, because it has filled all its places with children fromthe catchment area.   And although they live very close to Good School, they are not allocated a place because they did not specify it.  

Family B do get a place at Good School.    Although they live some distance away, they specified a preference and therefore have a priority over a family living closer who did not express a preference.

Family A are allocated the nearest school with vacancies when all preferences have been allocated, which turns out to be in another town.   

There can be no doubt that one of the most acute problems facing this area is the acute shortage of affordable homes.   No other single issue comes anywhere near this in the frequency with which it is raised in Phil Willis’s constituency surgeries or in his postbag.   

Numbers of the Council’s housing waiting list have increased steadily since the Conservatives took control of the Council in 2003, as this graph so clearly shows, so that by 2008 the numbers were virtually double those in 1997.

It should therefore be extremely welcome news for homeless families that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has recently announced that the Government is planning to allow councils once again to build homes, to keep all the rent from them and to retain the whole capital sum should the homes be sold in the future.   Grants are to be available to local authorities in the same way that they currently are to housing asssociations.   This frees local authorities to provide the affordable homes that are so urgently needed.

Will Harrogate Borough Council respond positively?    They have recently been praised for their speedy reallocation of vacant homes, their timely repairs service and their effective collection of rents.    It would be good to see that they also aim to provide homes for at least some of the thousands of local people who at the moment live in overcrowded, unsuitable or unfit dwellings.

Further welcome news from the Department of Communities and Local Government is that they are offering additional subsidies to local authorities who reduce their rent increases in line with new guidance from the Department.    Authorities have been asked to bid for these new subsidies by the end of April.