Statutory Notice

PRESCRIBED ALTERATION TO WOODEATON MANOR SCHOOL

Response from Woodeaton Parish Meeting  

1. Woodeaton Manor was built in 1775. In 1791 Sir John Soane, one of England’s greatest architects, responsible for Dulwich Picture Gallery and the interiors of the original Bank of England, added a new wing and the ionic porch of Coade stone. The main house was redecorated at the same time, with elegant, characteristic Soane cornices, chimney pieces and decorations. Most of these features are still in fine condition. The importance of the interior is reflected in the Grade II* listing of the Manor House. The II* listing ("particularly important buildings of more than special interest") puts a building in the top 6% of all listed buildings. The remainder of the site—the stable block, water tower, workshops, boundary walls, walled garden and folly—is all Grade II listed.

According to the County Council’s Principal Planning Officer:¹

2. On 14 January 2004, the Executive resolved to ask officers to consult schools, parents and partners on a proposal to:

The intention of proposal (b)(1) was that Woodeaton Manor School would become an annexe of Northfield School under the control of Northfield’s Head and Governors. Under proposal (c), the residential provision was to be for children whose needs spanned the whole spectrum of emotional and behavioural difficulties and who would not be pupils at Woodeaton Manor. It was intended that the residential care at Woodeaton would be available all year round. The recommendations on which the above decision was based made no mention of the historical and architectural significance of the Woodeaton buildings.

3. These proposals were strongly criticised by English Heritage who were absolutely clear about the suitability of Woodeaton Manor as a school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. In relation to the proposals (b)(1) and (b)(2), Dr Green wrote:²

"… Option 1 would also be unacceptable"

"… English Heritage considers that both Options 1 and 2 would be highly inappropriate for Woodeaton Manor"

"… Option 1 would also be a matter of grave concern for English Heritage. This is not only because of what we regard as a significant potential risk to the fabric of the Manor and its setting of housing in residential accommodation the full range of EBD children, but also in principle because once the school is under the EBD umbrella it would in our view be difficult to control the kind of pupils allowed to attend Woodeaton."

"It is our understanding that a continuation of the present MLD school use (and intensity of use) at Woodeaton is simply not an option, on cost grounds. We regret this. In view of the matters discussed above, we strongly object to the use of Woodeaton for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties."

She continued:

The present time is clearly an important turning point in the life of this Grade II* country house. In view of this we strongly recommend that your Council, as responsible owners of this important historic building, commission a Conservation Plan from a suitably qualified external conservation consultant. This would define in detail the significances of the building, would examine its vulnerabilities and define appropriate policies to manage these vulnerabilities.

Dr Green wished:

"to see a separate Impact Assessment, likewise by a suitably qualified external conservation consultant, written in the light of the Conservation Plan".

4. As part of the formal consultation process, Oxfordshire County Council’s Principal Planning Officer wrote:¹

"If however, some form of guarantee could be provided which;

(a) ensures that the category of child to be relocated to Woodeaton as part of the Northfield School/Woodeaton School review would create no more of a risk to the fabric of the building than those already there; and

(b) ensures that staff who will be managing the new intake of pupils at Woodeaton would be either the existing staff (who appear to have a knowledge and respect for this historic building) or new staff are made aware and sign up to some form of conservation management plan and training which would reinforce to them its historic significance;

then I would be prepared to support Option 1 of the last report to Executive on this matter (i.e. Developing additional provision for 40 pupils requiring therapeutic support at Woodeaton), subject to the provision of a Conservation Plan as outlined by English Heritage prior to any decision being made on the change of occupancy."

He continued:

"I am unable to support either Option 2 or the proposal for residential provision for 20 pupils at Woodeaton as mentioned in the last report for the reasons set out earlier and for the reasons outlined by English Heritage."

5. Mrs Dance (Oxford Preservation Trust) wrote:³

Before any decisions are made over the future use of Woodeaton Manor, we ask that a Conservation and Management Plan for the site be prepared.

6. Woodeaton Parish Meeting, in its formal response to the consultation exercise:⁴ (i) expressed grave concern about the suitability of a Grade II* listed building for the proposed use; (ii) questioned the choice of Iffley Mead as the County’s only MLD school; (iii) described the safety hazards presented by Woodeaton Quarry and by road traffic through Woodeaton village; (iv) summarized the arguments used by LEA officials in 1996-1998 to reject Woodeaton Manor as a possible site for the relocation of Northfield School; (v) expressed serious doubts about various financial aspects of the proposal; and (vi) asked that the County Council complete a full Conservation Plan before any decision was made on the future use of the Woodeaton Manor site.

Some of these issues are dealt with below.

7. In the light of these responses, the Executive resolved on 7 April 2004 to:

(a) endorse in principle the overall conclusions in the report as to the future roles of Iffley Mead, Woodeaton Manor and Northfield;

(c) take appropriate action to find a new site for Northfield School; and

(d) commission a Conservation Plan in relation to Woodeaton Manor School.

The LEA has acknowledged that Minute (b)(1) is not an accurate record of the decision reached by the Executive, which was that the 17 residential pupils would be from amongst, and not in addition to, the 40 children to be educated at Woodeaton Manor.⁵ The LEA has also confirmed that the current plan for the residential care is for 4 days a week during term time only.⁵

Thus, the original proposals (14 January): (i) to relocate Northfield School to Woodeaton Manor; (ii) to accommodate Northfield pupils at the Woodeaton residence; (iii) to educate at Woodeaton pupils from the behavioural end of the EBD continuum; and (iv) to close and sell Northfield hostel, have all been dropped. In addition, (v) the LEA’s assertion that Woodeaton Manor with 40 pupils would not be viable as a separate school has been reversed, allowing Woodeaton to continue as an autonomous school.

These decisions represent a considerable change of direction on all major aspects of the original proposals. It would have saved time and money had officials established the views of English Heritage and the County Council’s Principal Planning Officer, before bringing forward recommendations to the Executive on 14 January 2004. The Conservation Plan should also have been completed before January 2004 – instead, it was only commissioned in April this year.

8. Woodeaton Parish Meeting, in a paper to the Executive for its meeting on 7 April,⁶ repeated many of the comments made earlier (see 6 above), adding (i) strong support for the robust line taken by English Heritage and the Principal Planning Officer (see 3 and 4 above); (ii) concern that there should be strict and effective procedures for selecting pupils with "emotional/social difficulties requiring a therapeutic approach" who would be compatible with the fragile nature of the Woodeaton Manor buildings; (iii) dismay at the highly compressed timetable for the proposed production of the Conservation Plan; and (iv) a request that consideration be given to the sale of Woodeaton Manor and the possible uses of the £3.5-5.0M proceeds.

9. In addition to our grave disquiet about the suitability of Woodeaton Manor for the proposed use, there are three issues that still concern us.

Finance seems to have been one of the driving forces behind the original proposals. It is therefore surprising that there is no business plan to support the proposals, even at this late stage in the proceedings. One might have expected detailed financial forecasts including the costs of running the three schools, projected savings (e.g. from moving children to mainstream schools) and the likely revenue from selling one or more of Northfield Hostel, Iffley Mead and Woodeaton Manor. Without such information it is impossible for taxpayers to judge whether the proposals are financially sound. It is surely essential to have a detailed and reasoned financial case, weighing the various options in terms of their costs and benefits.

The original proposals were motivated in part by the desire to reduce the need for expensive out-of-county placements: this saving will no longer materialise. Nor will any resources be released, as originally intended, by the closure and sale of Northfield Hostel.

Grade II* listed Georgian manor houses are expensive to maintain and all work must be carried out to a very high standard. According to the Building and engineering maintenance plan, 2003/2004, prepared by W. S. Atkins, the assessed needs for delegated and non-delegated repairs and maintenance at Woodeaton Manor are £247,000 and £106,600 respectively.⁷ Most of this work is assigned the priority

It is unclear whether the County Council has budgeted for this essential work.

The Conservation Plan progress report (see below), if adopted by the County Council, also has serious cost implications.

(b) Iffley Mead School

LEA officials were challenged at a public meeting⁸ by parents of Woodeaton pupils for manipulating admissions to Iffley Mead and Woodeaton Manor Schools in recent years in order to maintain numbers at the former and reduce them to an unviable level at the latter. No plausible explanation for this policy has been offered at any time.

The only justification given for choosing Iffley Mead, rather than Woodeaton Manor, as the County’s sole MLD school is that it would minimise the disruption to children by transferring 14 pupils from Woodeaton Manor rather than 71 from Iffley Mead.⁹ This calculation ignores the disruption of transferring pupils from Northfield to Woodeaton.

The educational case for making Iffley Mead the County’s only MLD school has not been adequately made. Woodeaton Manor School is an outstandingly successful school¹⁰ with the capacity, experience and ability substantially to improve the lives of MLD children in Oxfordshire for the foreseeable future. The same cannot confidently be said of Iffley Mead School.

(c) Woodeaton Quarry

There is a large active limestone quarry immediately adjacent to Woodeaton Manor School. Although it has been quiet since the summer of 2003, an enormous quantity of stone was extracted during the preceding 2 years, such that parts of the quarry boundary that abut the Woodeaton Manor site are now almost vertical cliff faces. At the closest point, the quarry is 100 m from both the Manor House and the residential hostel. LEA officials appear to have been unaware of the existence of the quarry until a recent site visit,¹¹ despite having been informed of the potential dangers in February 2000.¹²

LEA officials acknowledge that the proximity of the quarry presents a risk, and have plans to erect fences along the boundaries that divide the Manor grounds from the quarry. Although the new and existing fencing and earth bank would prevent a child accidentally stumbling into the quarry, they would not deter a curious or adventurous child determined to get in. It would take a fit teenager less than a minute to walk along the drive, out of the main entrance or over the low stone boundary wall, onto the road through the village and up to the southern access of the quarry, where only a single strand of barbed wire at waist height separates him or her from a cliff face and the dangers and attractions of a very large hole in the ground.

That there have, fortunately, been no incidents involving Woodeaton Manor’s pupils in recent years reflects the infrequency with which Woodeaton’s pupils leave the school grounds unaccompanied by an adult.¹³ (The 1999 Ofsted report for Northfield School, by contrast, refers to "a lot of truancy during the day" and "Regular incidents of pupils leaving lessons or the school premises without permission". Both Northfield’s Head Teacher¹⁴ and Deputy Head⁸ have freely admitted that their pupils abscond from time to time.) It is also true that the recent intensive stone extraction has made the quarry much more dangerous than it was 2 years ago.

The deepest part of the quarry is flooded. In 1998, Oxfordshire County Council rejected a site at Stratton Audley as a possible site for the relocation of Northfield School.¹⁵ One of the main reasons given was the "danger of drowning in a small lake at the eastern end of the site"

The quarry is used very audibly for several hours every Thursday evening during the summer months for clay pigeon shooting. This activity will advertise the presence of the quarry to children living in the residence and is probably an inappropriate activity in the neighbourhood of disturbed children. When, in 1996-1998, the County Council was searching for a site for the relocation of Northfield School, one of the assessment criteria was that it should not be adjacent to incompatible uses.¹⁶ Amongst these were military uses, which presumably include gun-fire.

10. The recommendation before the Executive on 6 July 2004 is to:

We have several comments on the Report by the Director for Learning & Culture and Head of Property that accompanies these recommendations:

Paragraphs 1-3: The Executive also resolved on 7 April 2004 to: "take appropriate action to find a new site for Northfield School" (see 7 above).

Paragraph 9: The "opposition from the residents of Woodeaton" is not, as implied, opposition to the current proposals (on which we were never formally consulted until the statutory notice was published), but opposition to the original proposals. No mention is made here of the strong opposition to the original proposals vigorously expressed by parents of Woodeaton pupils at a public meeting on 26 February 2004.⁸

Paragraph 12: English Heritage did indeed compliment the School and the Council as stated. To set this in context, the commendation appeared as two sentences in a 3½-page letter that was highly critical of the original proposals (see 3 above). There has indeed been consultation with English Heritage, Planning Officers and the Oxford Preservation Trust, but this should have taken place, if only on an informal basis, before the original proposals were brought forward.

Paragraph 17: Oxfordshire County Council has, in fact, a very poor record in respect of the Woodeaton Manor site. The Grade II listed folly has been allowed to fall into a disgraceful state of ruin. An attempt in 2003 to get planning permission to convert it into a dwelling met with strong opposition from Woodeaton Parish Meeting, was rejected by South Oxfordshire District Council and was turned down on appeal by the Planning Inspector. The recent repairs to the Grade II listed stone boundary wall fall well below acceptable conservation standards.

Paragraph 19: The original intention was that the hostel at Woodeaton Manor would be used in part for pupils who would otherwise have to be educated expensively out-of-county. Now that this is no longer an option, it is difficult to see how the current proposals will "reduce the upward pressure on the out-of-county budgets".

A Conservation Plan would normally be the first, rather than the last stage of determining a change of use of a local-authority-owned historic building. Members of the Executive will only have the opportunity to make a truly informed decision on the future of Woodeaton Manor when the Conservation Plan is complete at the end of August, at the time the proposed changes are supposed to come into force. However, we understand that the progress report that will be considered by the Executive on 6 July will contain the principal recommendations of the final Conservation Plan.

11. It would be wholly unsatisfactory if the Executive merely "noted" the Conservation Plan progress report and the outcome of the statutory consultation process (recommendation (a)) before determining whether to proceed with the proposals (recommendation (b)). If English Heritage’s stipulations with regard to the Conservation Plan are not to be totally disregarded, the Executive must accept the policy recommendations in the Conservation plan report before approving recommendation (b).

At the time of writing, Woodeaton Parish Meeting has seen only a draft of the Conservation Plan progress report. We assume that this version does not differ significantly from that which will be considered by the Executive. We understand that the policy recommendations contained in this report have the backing of English Heritage and of the staff and governors of Woodeaton Manor School. We believe the policies recommended in the report will provide formal, coherent and effective safeguards to protect Woodeaton Manor for the foreseeable future.

For the reasons outlined above, and described in more detail in our response to the formal consultation exercise⁴ and our submission to the Executive on 7 April,⁶ Woodeaton Parish Meeting believes the proposed change of use of Woodeaton Manor School to be unacceptable. However, if the Executive on 6 July resolves to approve recommendation (b), that decision will have our support only if the Executive has previously agreed to adopt and act upon the policy recommendations in the Conservation Plan report.

It is essential that both the admissions policy and educational use of Woodeaton Manor School be carefully and strictly managed to minimise the potential impacts, allowing entry only to pupils with needs that are compatible with the vulnerable nature of the site.

If a decision on the Conservation Plan’s recommendations is deferred until after 31 August, or if the policy recommendations contained in the report cannot be accepted essentially in their entirety, then the Executive must delay a decision on recommendation (b). To do otherwise would be to ignore English Heritage and to abdicate Oxfordshire County Council’s responsibility to care for a fine historic building.

1. Report by Mr J. Hamilton, Principal Planning Officer, OCC, undated. Reproduced in Ref. 2 as Appendix 1, pages 13-14.

2. Letter from Dr D. Green, Inspector of Historic Buildings, English Heritage to Mr P. Scott, W. S. Atkins, 5 Mar 2004. Reproduced in Ref. 2 as Appendix 2, pages 15-17.

3. Letter from Mrs D. Dance, Director, Oxford Preservation Trust, to Mr J. Griffin, OCC, 3 Mar 2004. Reproduced in Ref. 2 as Appendix 3, page 18.

4. Response to consultation on proposals in relation to Woodeaton Manor, Iffley Mead and Northfield Special Schools from Woodeaton Parish Meeting, 4 Mar 2004.

5. Letters from G. Tee, Head of Children’s Services, OCC to P. J. Hore, 4 Jun and 24 Jun 2004.

6. Submission to the meeting of Oxfordshire County Council Executive on 7 Apr 2004 from Woodeaton Parish Meeting, 2 Apr 2004.

7. Building and engineering maintenance plan, Woodeaton Manor School, 2003/2004, W. S. Atkins.

8. Public meeting, Woodeaton Manor School, 26 Feb 2004.

9. Report by the Director for Learning & Culture, Director for Social & Health Care and Head of Finance to OCC Executive, Item EX8, 14 Jan 2004,

10. Times Educational Supplement, "Special schools’ stunning grades", 7 Feb 2004.

11. Site visit with Oxford Preservation Trust and SODC Conservation officer, Woodeaton Manor School, 19 Feb 2004.

12. Letter from P. J. Hore to G. Badman, Chief Education Officer, OCC, 28 Feb 2000.

13. Letter from G. Badman to P. J. Hore, 17 Mar 2000.

14. Conversation at Northfield School, M. Blencowe, Head Teacher, Northfield School and P. J. Hore, Chairman, Woodeaton Parish Meeting, 24 Feb 2004.

15. "Justification for an application for the construction of a special needs school with associated boarding and staff accommodation, playing field, hard play area, access and landscaping next to the Oxford Road roundabout, Eynsham", Oct, 1998.

16. Ref. 15, page 17, no. 8.

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