Sheila Oliver's Campaigning Website

At Harcourt Street, North Reddish, Stockport local people had a much-loved playing field and green lung.  People used to meet there for a chat and if someone elderly hadn't been seen for a while, neighbours would call on them to make sure they were OK.  It was very valuable to them.

Although the Council was fully aware the land was contaminated, as were local people - the Council had refused three planning permissions in 1974 for that reason - they pretended it wasn't contaminated.  (Removal of contamination is very, very expensive if it is done safely and properly).

It was in the Council's town plan for both public open space and the site for the replacement of one junior school only  - North Reddish Juniors -  yet Stockport Council decided to build its mega-shed, prison-style replacement for the three much-loved schools which were to be closed.  Local people should have been given the option (which would have been much cheaper) to renovate the existing schools.  They weren't!  

People were horrified that what they knew to be contaminated land was being portrayed by Stockport Council as completely safe.  After much harranguing by local residents the Council grudgingly carried out contamination investigations. These were completely inadequate, not on a strict grid pattern as is stipulated by BS 10175, no contamination pits at all were dug where the actual school was going, which is directly over the rubbish infilled claypits, intensively tipped, the Council admits, from 1954 to 1974 at a time when no records were kept.

The planning application reference is:- DC024357.

Please forgive the large amount of evidence I have posted up here.  If children are killed in road accidents around the school or their tiny lungs have the irritation of asbestos fibres which disable and finally kill them, I want the lawyers acting for their parents to have access to all the evidence they need to bring damages cases or corporate manslaughter charges against the relevant council officers, Executive Councillors, and outside firms who bent the law or the truth to get this development passed.

It is completely impossible to navigate the complaints system at Stockport Council.  I am quite a persistent person, yet I can't manage it. I sent Mr. Majothi, the Complaints Officer, all the documents below.  He complained to the Information Commission that I had sent him this evidence and he stated, as did Goddard, Derbyshire, Weldon, Candler, Bodsworth, Schulz, Boylan, Khan, Sager, Re et al, that all the issues I raised below were "vexatious", despite them knowing full well that I represented hundreds of local people and that what I was saying was completely correct.  As you will see from the letter opposite from a Mr Adrian Moores, Head of Customer Services, Mr. Majothi has no recollection of any complaint.   I have copies of all the emails sent to Mr. Majothi and there were a lot of them.   I have to question whether Mr. Majothi is a fit and proper person, then, to run the Complaints Department.  All the evidence I submitted was branded "vexatious" and wasting their precious time.  This evidence showed the very real danger to children, financial mismanagement on a terrifying scale, abuse of planning laws, wilfull blindness to the road traffic dangers to young people and local residents and much, much more.

Andrew Webb, Director of Children and Young People's Services, states it will take 84 hours of officer time to read through the documents on the school "redacting" all the secrets before I could read it. It would cost £350 in photocopying time and paper and  £2,100 in officer time to remove the secrets. Request refused.

I wanted no photocopies - just to read the documents.  I knew Mr Webb was not telling the truth.  How can there be so many secrets about one primary school that a council officer would have to work full time for almost three weeks to remove them?  For what reason did Mr Andrew Webb make this ludicrous statement?  Why did he have to prevent at all costs any information on the toxic waste dump school leaching out?  The Council has a legal responsibility to keep their records in a reasonable manner. This was a current project. All the documents should have been to hand.

I had already read the documents some months previously. There were all in one place. I merely wanted to re-read them and to read any new documents.