LESS than 24 hours after councillors urged the two sides in the Stoke Lodge open space row to try to compromise, work began to put a fence back up.
The move on September 23 by Cotham School, which leases the playing fields from the council, provoked fury from the We Love Stoke Lodge campaigners, who urged the authority to halt the school’s “relentless pursuit” of the barrier.
But as the Voice went to print the work was continuing.
It followed a decision on September 22 by the council’s economy and skills policy committee not to to issue an “Article Four Direction”, which would have removed the permitted development rights and meant the school would need to apply for planning permission for a replacement fence.
Sandra Fryer, chair of governors at Cotham School, told the meeting: “We’ve looked at the things that worked well when the fence was up up before and things that didn’t work well.
“We have reached out in a subtle way to the campaigners but so far all we’ve heard is ‘we’ll keep fighting’. Let the school get on with running its business properly. We will put the fence back up. We will do it properly and effectively.”
Although the committee did not vote for the Article Four direction because of the expense and time involved, councillors urged mediation to avoid potential further legal action. Both sides have incurred huge costs in the row, which has been going on for years.
Labour Councillor Tom Renhard said: “Campaigners on both sides need to get back in the room together and have a conversation, to try and have a further attempt to mediate a more positive solution that’s going to work for both the school and local residents. The amount of time, resource and impact this is having is not a situation that anyone wants to find ourselves in.
“The council should play a role in perhaps appointing mediators to help facilitate those conversations. That would be a better use of time than us trying to pursue one side or the other and probably incur further legal costs.”
Liberal Democrat Cllr Andrew Brown, chair of the economy committee, added: “Something we’ve not mentioned is the idea of potentially dividing the space in some way so that public access could be retained on one side of the oak tree, and then a more contained solution for the school adjacent to the pavilion.
“There should be attempts at mediation that avoid the courts and making lawyers very wealthy. This has cost the council and the school a great deal of money and the only people benefiting are lawyers at the moment.”
According to the school’s website, the playing fields are “now closed pending work under way to enable the school to get back to using the playing fields in due course”.
Includes reporting by Alex Seabrook, LDRS