YOUR LETTERS
In response to David Anderson, corporate director, East Dunbartonshire Council, regarding the facilities at the proposed Bearsden Academy (Letters, January 9): Sportscotland may not have objected formally to the sports facilities proposed but it has made it clear that it does not believe there are sufficient facilities, indoor and out, for a school with a roll of 1200 pupils. Sportscotland exists to provide guidance to local authorities and others yet appears to be toothless when proposals fall short of its recommendations. A council official informed me that it is only guidance, so they can ignore the recommendations.
Scottish Executive officials must take action to ensure that this organisation is given powers to ensure that all our schools have facilities to improve health and breed champion athletes of the future.
Bearsden North Community Council and around 20 other local groups and individuals have objected to the proposals. In fact, we have raised a total of 18 issues with the council. We feel so strongly about these issues that we have requested a public hearing prior to the council approving the plans.
Part of the problem with this PPP project has been the lack of proper consultation. Mr Anderson states that the council's PPP team has worked with its building partner but makes no mention of working with local groups. The council is working so closely with building partners that it proposes to allow them to start building on the existing school site early this year. This means that existing sports facilities will be lost with no suitable alternative provided. The council also proposes to sell part of the new site to developers for commercial use rather than use the land to provide the sports facilities recommended in Sportscotland guidance. Developers' profits appear to be more important than our children's education.
Detailed plans for the school were only made available to the public on November 9, 2006. From a public perspective, it appears that a veil of secrecy has been drawn over these proposals and that all reasonable observations are brushed aside as irrelevant or too late to be considered.
I agree with Mr Anderson that the objective must be to provide facilities fit for the challenges of the 21st century. But I cannot accept that this will be achieved when the pitches proposed are less than the recommended size, there is one fewer rugby pitch than at present, there is no full-size hockey pitch, a running track is laid out over grass pitches and, Mr Anderson fails to mention, pupils will be bussed to other sports facilities to fulfil the curriculum.
East Dunbartonshire states that it is committed to community planning. To quote from its own document, community planning is "most importantly, about ensuring that local people are able to influence the decisions of the organisations that provide their services". Fine words, but on this project the council has failed to put them into practice.
Keith Small, Chair, Bearsden North Community Council, 66 Dumgoyne Drive, Bearsden.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article