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.

Swanley Village: progress by stages

A number of Highways projects are being carried out in Swanley Village with support from my Member Highway Fund (now the Combined Member Fund). Progress is being made, albeit on a piecemeal basis.

High-friction surfacing is set to be installed as part of the establishment of gateways at the entry points to the village. It was originally intended that these would be installed before Christmas, but this was deferred until the February half term. It has now been confirmed that this will take place on Monday 16 February, and will involve a very short road closure (lasting about an hour).

Gateway signs were installed before Christmas, but appear not to have been painted. Residents have understandably questioned this; I have duly taken up the issue, and this has produced some head scratching at Kent Highways, since the signs should have been painted in a similar fashion to those seen in other villages. Officers are looking into this and hopefully it should be rectified soon.

Finally, we seem to be close to a point where we can move ahead in securing the village sign. I hope to confirm the precise status of this with officers  next week.

KCC moves ahead with LED lighting

Kent County Council plans to invest some £40 m to convert its street lights to LED (light emitting diode) technology, delivering huge cost and energy savings while offering the prospect of restoring full-night lighting in residential areas. This will be the biggest conversion scheme of its kind in the country.

The council has secured low-cost financing and will go out to procurement for delivery of the lighting. Subject to this process being completed satisfactorily, installation could start late this year or in early 2016. The initial focus will be on installation in residential areas.

Installing LED should deliver savings of 60% on KCC's highways lighting bills, enabling full-night lighting to be restored. This is a very welcome development; a number of constituents, especially in Swanley, have been strongly opposed to the part-night lighting that was instituted at the end of 2013. The County Council has argued that it had to deliver both cost and carbon savings. If LED is installed successfully, it should enable savings to be delivered and residents' concerns to be met.

You can find an article on this from the KCC media hub here.

Shoreham School: encouraging Ofsted report

Ofsted inspectors have issued a very encouraging report on Shoreham School. This was the latest of a series of so-called Section 8 reports, which track developments at the school since it went into Special Measures late last year. Reports in December 2013 and March 2014 were relatively encouraging, but the July report - issued just before the summer holidays - was much more negative.

The latest report, based on a visit on 25-26 November, praises progress under the new head teacher, Mrs Gillian Lovatt-Young, and highlights improvements in teaching and children's progress. Having visited the school and met Mrs Lovatt-Young and the chair of governors a couple of weeks before the inspection, I picked up a sense of strong momentum under her leadership. Mrs Lovatt-Young, the governors, staff and pupils at Shoreham are all to be congratulated.

Since the summer I have visited six of the seven primary schools in Darent Valley. It is not very long since we were in a position where one (Shoreham) was in Special Measures and three (High Firs, Horton Kirby and St. Paul's) were rated as Requires Improvement (the former 'Satisfactory' rating by Ofsted, or 3 on the 1-4 scale). In July, High Firs under Colin Turtle's leadership has regained its Good rating. A visit to Horton Kirby left me hopeful that we could see a better rating there soon, and now we have this encouraging report on Shoreham. I will be visiting St. Paul's and meeting its new head in the New Year.

Overall, Kent's primary schools have demonstrated a sharp improvement in Ofsted ratings in the last few years. It is good that Darent Valley seems to be sharing in this progress.