Visit to the Swanley Gateway site

(L-R): Sue Meads (KCC); Cllr. Tony Searles, Swanley TC; me; Gavin Ernest  (gdm Architects);  Paul Kemp (Mears)

This week I had a chance to visit the site of Swanley Library, undergoing its tranformation into the Swanley Gateway. I was accompanied by Tony Searles, leader of Swanley Town Council, who has long played a key role in the project; architect Gavin Ernest of gdm Architects; KCC officers and staff from the contractor Mears.

The Gateway site lies just outside my Darent Valley Division (the boundary with the Swanley Division is essentially along the railway line), but the project is of considerable importance to many of my constituents. I also had extensive involvement in earlier plans and discussions about the project in my previous Cabinet role, which included responsibility for property.

Image courtesy of Portsdown

The project involves an extensive refurbishment and demolition of the interior walls. As the plan (pictured) shows, the ground floor will have an extensive open library space and cafe. The Post Office and KCC Social Services will be found to the rear of the ground floor. Job Centre Plus will have desks on the ground floor (JCP's only on the ground presence in Sevenoaks District), while KCC Registrar services, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Swanley Volunteer Centre and others from the voluntary and community sector will also have desks. Perhaps most importantly, West Kent Housing will have a major presence in the Gateway, including offices on the first floor. As before, the building will be used by the Member of Parliament for surgeries.

The Gateway should succeed in its aim of delivering a one stop shop and community hub for Swanley in a new, more comfortable and energy efficient building. Architect, contractors and council staff are very committed to its successful delivery. The next major public stage will be the setting up of a mobile Gateway exhibition for a few days (28-30 March) in the square byAsda to give residents a taste of how the Gateway will operate. It will also give residents a chance to vote for a name for the new Gateway. The building itself is scheduled to open in the summer.

Oasis Academy Hextable to close

Oasis Academy in Hextable has announced that it is due to close. Current Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 students will be offered places at alternative schools. No new Year 7 will join the school in September but current Year 10 and Year 12 students will remain at the school to complete their studies. The school will finally close in summer 2016.

Clearly this is a worrying and distressing development for students and their families, as well as for teachers and other staff. Many of the families affected live in my colleague Robert Brookbank's Swanley Division, but there are certainly also Darent Valley constituents of mine (chiefly from Swanley) with children at the school. In any case, as KCC Cabinet Member for Education, I have been very much involved in discussions about the prospective closure and was interviewed about it by Dominic King on BBC Radio Kent drive time yesterday.

Since Hextable is an academy, the decision for closure was not for the County Council; the proposal came from Oasis, the academy sponsor, and was ultimately agreed by government ministers. The County Council was, however, involved in discussions on the proposal, not least because we have the responsibility to ensure that students displaced by the closure are found new places.

We opposed the initial closure proposal, not least because we expect the population of secondary school students to grow strongly in North West Kent in the coming years. However, the school was certainly operating far below capacity and faced the prospect of relatively large numbers of students leaving in the next couple of years while current Years 7 and 8 are much smaller groups. The pressures faced by Oasis are in part a reflection of the current school funding system, introduced in 2013, under which more than 90% of a school's funding reflects its number of pupils on roll. Add to this the current dip - soon to be reversed - in secondary school numbers, and any school which finds it hard to attract pupils can find itself very vulnerable. We understood the pressures Oasis faced, but remain very concerned about the need to ensure adequate secondary places in the future. In any case, the Department for Education approved the closure proposal.

KCC's role is to secure places for the 150 or so students currently in Years 7 - 9. Letters offering a new school place will go out at the start of next week, and should arrive with families on Tuesday. We have had extensive discussions with local secondary schools, as well as with neighbouring education authorities. Orchards Academy, Wilmington Academy, Ebbsfleet Academy and Dartford Science and Technology College are among the schools likely to offer the largest number of places.

For current Year 6 pupils, preferences for Hextable have been removed from the system for primary offer day on 2 March. Parents who did express a preference for Hextable - and have therefore 'lost' one of their options - will be able to add in an extra preference at the time of the reallocation of places in the spring.

Longer-term, we will have to look to the need for secondary provision in the area. As with any academy that converted from being a community school, the academy trust leased the school buildings (on a 125 year lease) but the freehold of the land remains with the local authority. The Hextable site will therefore revert to KCC on then closure of the school next year.

Swanley Village high-friction surfacing installed

As noted in a previous post, the higher friction surfacing for the Gateway signs in Swanley Village was due to be installed today. I visited this afternoon and this has indeed taken place.

The gateway signs themselves were not painted on installation - a very odd omission. I took this up with Kent Highways, who told me that this would be rectified, as it was some days ago.

Regarding the village sign, the order for removing it for repainting is ready to go and we should be able to install a new, very satisfactory support for the repainted sign.

Pinks Hill bund to be installed

As part of the interim measures to ease the flooding risks to Pinks Hill, it was agreed last autumn that Kent Highways would install a bund on the open space across which much of the water flowed. This would protect some of the most exposed properties. 

These and other interim measures are designed to ease some of the more immediate problems while longer-term measures to address the problems of the lagoon are planned and undertaken.

At a November meeting of Swanley Town Council - which owns the open space - councillors agreed that the bund could sited on their land. Since then, however, there have been delays in its installation. These are apparently caused by an absence of recyclable material to be used in the bund. 

However, I now understand that the work is set to be carried out in the very near future - either tomorrow or early next week. The gang who will work on it are currently completing a project in Edgar Close and should then move over to work on the Pinks Hill bund.

Connect Plus carried out de-silting works on the lagoon before Christmas and these resulted in an immediate drop in water levels of 1.5 metres. It seems that this has had a positive effect over recent weeks, and in addition we have fortunately not seen the rainfall levels of twelve months ago. Nonetheless, installation of the bund should represent a very welcome development.