By Cllr Graham Howe
Wokingham Borough’s Liberal Democrat leadership has dithered and delayed again, but this time they’ve let down children at a crucial point in their education.
Bohunt School in Arborfield was the first new school built in our Borough for half a century, it was delivered by a Conservative administration and opened in 2016 for children aged 11-16 largely from rural areas South of the Borough.
It is a great success, highly thought of by pupils and parents. So much so that a local campaign began, to expand the school and create a new Sixth Form, with support from local conservative councillors and local MP James Sunderland. Petitions were signed by a staggering 1,400 residents.
In March 2022, the then Conservative administration approved fully costed and timetabled plans for the expansion to include a brand new Sixth Form, 30 extra Year 7 places, and extra Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). The agreement included Bohunt Education Trust contributing £2 million to the project.
The expansion is needed to ensure children in the South of the Borough didn’t have travel long distances to continue their post-16 education but it would also have alleviated the pressure for good school places felt across Wokingham.
Residents, parents, pupils and the wider school community were promised that the Sixth Form would go ahead by the current Liberal Democrat administration right up until the eleventh hour.
During the local election campaign Liberal Democrat candidates and activists promised the expansion was safe in their hands and that pupils would be able to start the new Sixth Form in September.
Wokingham Borough Council admitted in October that the new Sixth Form building would not be ready by September 2023, but claimed pupils would still be able to continue their post-16 education at the School.
When my colleague Cllr Charles Margetts asked at a Council Meeting on October 20 last year why progress was moving at a “glacial” pace and “what is going wrong” with the expansion, the Liberal Democrat Executing Member for Schools and Children’s Services, Cllr Prue Bray, said three times that she was committed to the expansion of Bohunt School, but implied it was a low priority for the Council saying, “there is quite a lot of other things going on in Children’s Services…”
I warned in February that the Council’s slowness to act in delivering the project was causing costs to mount up, owing to inflation and the cost for temporary classrooms, and that the whole project was at risk.
However, no real progress was made until time ran out.
With less than two weeks to the end of the school year Wokingham Borough Council has left pupils with an uncertain scramble for places elsewhere.
This is utterly shameful.
In April, Liberal Democrat Cllr Clive Jones said, “If we’re elected, will continue to offer financial competence and compassion to our residents.”
Who are they kidding? It is not financial competence to delay a project, fail to act, and let the costs mount.
It is not compassionate to leave children with an anxious summer holiday and no idea what they will do in September.
What we see here is sadly what the Liberal Democrats are doing time and time again. They didn’t mention doubling car parking charges, cutting weekly household bin collections, or scrapping free caddy liners in their 2022 election leaflets. They only informed residents of these decisions once they were in power.
In this year’s election campaign, they didn’t mention their plans to remove a so far undisclosed number of public litter bins from parks and walking routes. Yet they announced the decision on Twitter two months after winning the election. And they promised pupils would be able to study at Bohunt Sixth Form until just last weekend when the news was broken by two Liberal Democrat councillors on Facebook.
Cllr Graham Howe is the Conservative spokesperson for children’s services on Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Wargrave and Ruscombe
