Community sports access: Have we been stitched up again?
Ambler Comment
As Amble’s lovely new school opens, the community understandably look to this £50 million project with interest.
📷 The new Coquet Community School has now opened
The development has undergone several changes since the community consultation at the beginning of 2023 – understandable given the rise in the price of fuel, building materials and the cost of living generally.
Costs for the project grew from £36 million to £47 million and even at one point £51 million. The Ambler was told this extra £4 million was for contingencies.
But as a (now retired) member of Amble Town Council said to planners at the 2023 community consultation “Be careful what you promise people. The community will remember.”
Delight at the prospect of a brand new school building with light, bright new classrooms and up to date facilities and no leaky roofs or worn out equipment, was tempered with caution over what access the community would actually be given.
The public will have daytime access to the school sports hall and activity studio for seven hours three days per week. Access to other facilities will be available each evening from 4.30pm-10pm. Weekend and holiday access is from 8am – 9pm.
At the same time, people told The Ambler they remembered when the original Coquet High School was built, how similar promises were made, but in reality the public were given curtailed access to the facilities, and often shut out completely.
So will the public be allowed access to these lovely new facilities? Yes, and times seems to have been decided (see above) although, possibly, only if users have a DBS check and relevant insurance (see box below).
The Ambler wonders how many people this will disqualify.
If a couple of locals wanted to hire a badminton court on a one off basis, would they be able to?
📷 Some of the hiring rules for the new Coquet Community School state they may require DBS checks and insurance.
We asked headteacher James Andriot. He told us that decisions on DBS checks was dependent on the specifics of the hire.
“We are governed by the rules set out in ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ where there is a specific section on school facilities and external users during the school day. The ‘appropriateness’ of keeping children safe in these circumstances is at the heart of this statutory document and why each individual booking would have to be looked at by the lettings team.”
Julia Aston, director of Amble Development Trust told The Ambler: “On the Community Use Agreement, the Leader of NCC asked that the Trust and Town Council be included on a steering group to ensure there was independent community oversight. Again we worked with NCC and Amble Town Council to try to attain the best access to facilities possible for the community. Sadly we have been informed that the Trust will not be included on this steering group.”
All of this makes NCC’s recent refusal to allow a community transfer of the old sports hall even more disappointing.
As one resident told The Ambler: “We believed what we were promised about community access last time. Now it looks like we’ve been stitched up again.”
Anna Williams
