Build more primary and secondary schools for Sevenoaks pupils

Dear Sir,

It is not surprising that Cllr Margaret Crabtree is so out of touch on the lack of primary school provision in Sevenoaks and surrounding villlages (Chronicle p7 July 30).

The article was full of platitudes about population growth, which is hardly a surprising or novel trend in a popular and largely prosperous commuting town just 30 minutes or so from London.

During the last general election campaign, I was the only parliamentary candidate to turn out and meet members of the Sevenoaks Mumsnet group and discuss their daily plight in getting their children to and from primary schools several miles from where they lived, some of them along dangerous lanes with no footpaths. Local MP Michael Fallon evidently had more important matters of state on his agenda.

Since then, we have had a Sevenoaks Chronicle front page story on the 'educational valley of death' which local mums told me about, where insufficient schools and surgeries are being built to cope with the ever rising population, fuelled by new housing developments near local stations.

Surely the solution is not rocket science, even to Cllr Crabtree and her Conservative colleagues at County Hall and Westminster. The answer is to build more primary and secondary schools in Sevenoaks, including the long promised grammar annexe.

The Conservatives are now solely in government and control all the relevant authorities in Sevenoaks, so no can no longer use us Lib Dems as their fall guy.

But as a former local secondary school governor of long standing, I ask will the Tories finally rise to the challenge and either open or expand more schools and provide the places closer to where parents actually live?

Yours

Dr Alan Bullion

action@sevenoakslibdems.org.uk