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Classrooms must be pulled down

'NEIGHBOURS from hell' is how Arden School has been described by angry villagers and Knowle councillor Jeff Potts as a ten-year dispute over temporary classrooms came to a head.
Solihull Council's planning committee last week unanimously rejected the school's application to retain three blocks of temporary classrooms which front Station Road alongsode residential homes.
The school claims it needs the classrooms to accommodate pupils, but councillors, argued that Arden has sufficient accommodation in the two new blocks it has built since 2007.
As well as rejecting the application to retain the temporary classrooms it is believed the council is set to launch an investigation into how the school was allowed to flout planning rules regarding the huts over the past decade.
In that time residents claim that rubbish has been openly dumped on the site and the school has failed to landscape the area as stipulated by planning chiefs.
And the anger over the controversial piece of land was highlighted at last Wednesday's planning committee meeting where a 30-strong delegation of concerned villagers were in the public gallery to hear the application being considered.
The application itself was for a two-year extension for the temporary classrooms but it received scores of objections.
In total there were 36 letters of objection from residents and objections from two ward councillors, Knowle Society, Solihull Tree Wardens and Soihull ratepayers' Association.
"While not wanting to detract from the excellent academic results of Arden they really have been neighbours from hell," said Knowle councillor Jeff Potts.
"It is apalling the way they have treated their immediate neighbours for the best part of the last decade."
However, Arden headteacher Ann Green said the school had never flouted any planning rules.
"There is only one small planning condition we have not adhered to and that was on the advice of the planners," she said.
"This refers to the condition that landscaping around the classrooms was undertaken but this work was delayed until after this planning decision as it did not make any sense at all to spend much-needed money landscaping when the huts may have to be pulled down."
She added that the school had always done whatever it had been asked to do by the local education authority when it came to the land.
Mrs Green added that the school and local education authority were now assessing the impact this decision will have on the wlefare and education of the students and were considering whether or not to appeal against the decision.

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  <b>Arden School has been branded a ‘neighbour from hell’.</b>