CAMPAIGNERS HAVE condemned Oldham Council’s support to move Saddleworth School to Diggle rather than build a new school on the existing Uppermill site.
At the council’s December meeting, a resolution was passed to back the plans to relocate the secondary school to Huddersfield Road.
The resolution comes after a Technical Group, made up of Saddleworth School headmaster Matthew Milburn, governors and local residents, named Diggle as the preferred site.
But Save Diggle Action Group (SDAG), a group of concerned Saddleworth residents, have condemned the resolution and described it ‘uninformed, misguided and misleading’.
The resolution claims the existing site in Uppermill is ‘inadequate for a replacement school and is not fit to meet the educational needs of future generations of students’.
It also states that plans put forward by SDAG for development of a school on the Uppermill site do not meet ‘the aspirational wishes of parents, staff and school governors’.
Mike Buckley, speaking for SDAG, said: “The resolution is nonsense – the SDAG proposal is for exactly the same school proposed for Diggle to be built in Uppermill.
“The layout and facilities would be identical but would benefit from better sports facilities than those proposed at Diggle.
“SDAG proposals have been drawn up by a professional architect and building contractor with recent experience of the last government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme. We know they are viable and deliverable.
‘The government’s agency responsible for funding and building the new school have seen the SDAG proposals and have agreed the school can be built on the existing site. However they have produced no costings to show that it cannot be built within the existing budget.
“For convenience and ease of construction the agency prefers the green field site in Diggle. This is not surprising as they are not responsible for safeguarding Saddleworth’s green belt or the difficulty of access, traffic chaos and road safety problems that will follow.
“Seven out of the nine present schools being built under the government’s present programme are being built on their existing sites while the school continues in operation.”
Cllr. Buckley also criticised the council for the continued lack of public consultation over the project.
He said: “To our knowledge at least 46 people sent in email questions to the Council debate and another 16 were sent in as tweets. Not a single tweet was answered and only one email.
“The absence of consultation and the apparent lack of interest by the Council in the views of local people is an affront to local democracy.
“Anger and opposition to the move of the school to Diggle is growing, not just in Diggle itself, but in Uppermill, Greenfield, Dobcross and other parts of Saddleworth.
“When people realise what is proposed they are opposed to the move. It contravenes all existing planning policies, is universally inconvenient and rides roughshod over the wishes of local people.”
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