Surbiton Hospital could solve school places conundrum (From Surrey Comet)

Surbiton Hospital could solve Kingston school places conundrum

6:40am Monday 23rd February 2009 in News By David Lindsell

Surbiton Hospital would be an “obvious solution” to the primary school places crisis, campaigners have said.

Kingston Primary Care Trust (PCT) has invested £500,000 in consultants to draw up plans for a new £15m polyclinic on the Ewell Road site.

GP surgeries and other NHS services are likely to take up half of the site but Kingston Council, the police and voluntary sector organisations have held discussions over “a community hub” for the rest.

Primary school campaigner Paul Sloan said parents would back the idea of a school.

“It is a pretty obvious solution. It is clearly the area that is no longer in the catchment,” he said.

“They need to start making immediate decisions.”

Surbiton Councillor Frances Moseley did not rule out the possibility of a primary school but emphasised it was “early days”.

She said: “We are looking for a primary school but we are not sure it would work very well with a polyclinic.

"It really is very difficult to say at the moment.”

Kingston and Surbiton MP Edward Davey floated the possibility of a school when the McKinsey report was made public in December.

Last week he told the Surrey Comet that two new primary schools would be needed to meet demand in the future.

There are likely to be 300 children places by next year unless more bulge classes are built.

He said this week: “I am very keen that the community uses all of that precious site and if we can get the new modern health facilities that we want and extra facilities that would be fantastic.

“A school would certainly be in my top three choices and answer one of the biggest challenges we face.

"We need to look at all the design issues around that.”

Parents have started a petition calling for Kingston Council to increase capacity to ensure no Surbiton child has to travel for more than 30 minutes to and from school. To sign the petition visit epetitions.kingston.gov.uk

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