Plans for academies safe, despite county split – MP

Aug 7 2007 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

ELLESMERE Port’s plans for two new academies to provide secondary schooling are safe, according to the borough’s local MP.

Andrew Miller, Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, also branded three Conservative county councillors who had suggested they are at risk as “naive”.

The councillors had claimed the £50m development of two academies for Ellesmere Port could be thrown into jeopardy under a split Cheshire.

It follows the decision by the Government to back plans for combining all of Cheshire’s council services into two authorities – East and West Cheshire.

The county council has fiercely opposed this option, preferring a single “super council”, with an option for improving and streamlining the existing system also being proposed.

The academies for 11-19 year-olds would replace three secondary schools: Ellesmere Port Specialist School of Performing Arts, Whitby High School, and Cheshire Oaks high, which is a specialist sports college.

They would be based at Ellesmere Port Specialist School of Performing Arts and Whitby High, and provisionally titled the North and South Academy respectively.

Yesterday, county councillor Lynn Hardwick, executive member for adult services, said: “If responsibility for education in Ellesmere Port is taken over by a small-scale council – as proposed in a split Cheshire – the Government may well consider it lacks the ‘clout’ to deliver a scheme as transformational as this.

“What a terrible loss that would be for the people of Ellesmere Port.”

Her comments were echoed by fellow Conservatives, county councillors David Andrews and David Rowlands, executive member for children’s services.

Cllr Rowlands claimed setting up two unitary councils in Cheshire would cost taxpayers around £32.8m in transitional costs alone.

He said: “It will be the people of Cheshire who pay through the nose for unnecessary bureaucracy – and suffer wholesale disruption of first-class services – including one of the country’s best education authorities.”

But Ellesmere Port and Neston MP Mr Miller said the councillors were “playing political games with our children’s future”.

And last night he said that the claim the academy project was dead in the water as a result of local government reorganisation “is a falsehood and reflects a desperate attempt by Tories to keep their single county-wide unitary bid alive”.

Mr Miller said: “The opponents to the split of the remainder of the county have to realise that the single unitary bid is like the parrot in the Monty Python sketch – dead. Furthermore, references to our county are historically inaccurate. What about the parts of Halton and ŠWarrington that used to be in Cheshire or indeed Stockport or Wirral?

“The fact is that, like Warrington, Halton and indeed Wirral we can deliver improved services to our constituents with an authority of the size proposed.”

He said yesterday he received a letter from the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Lord Adonis, confirming that the bid for the academies had moved on to the next phase.

He said: “Together with county councillor Pat Merrick, I have been checking the veracity of the statement and we agree with the advice from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) that local government re-organisation is not a barrier to the project.”

liammurphy