'˜We will get this build done for the children'

Parents, teachers and governors have vowed to carry on fighting to ensure West Sussex County Council makes good on its promise to finish building a special school.

Dozens of people packed into the Burgess Hill Academy on Tuesday (September 6) for a meeting of the South Mid Sussex County Local Committee, where the issue of Woodlands Meed School was the main talking point.

Woodlands Meed opened in September 2012 as a single-site special school for 4-19-year-olds. The plan had been to complete the school by building a college for the older children on the same site, but the necessary funds never surfaced. Now, with the old portable cabins being used at the school no longer fit for purpose, Woodlands Meed has had to turn away children when they reached the age of 14.

Parents conducted themselves admirably at the meeting but feelings were high that the council had let down the children of Woodlands Meed – not only through its failure to complete the building but also its decision to lease the land from under the school’s feet. Last month, the land was leased for 125 years to the University of Brighton Academies Trust, which runs the Burgess Hill Academy – formerly Oakmeeds Community College.

One little girl summed up the mood perfectly.

Annabelle Hodgson, 11, a pupil at Woodlands Meed, said: “I don’t think it’s fair that some of us are not able to go to the college because they can’t go in wheelchairs and there are not enough toilets.

“I want the new school built because then my friends can go there.”

Members of the committee were supportive of the school’s plight but Councillor Andrew Barrett-Miles astonished the room when he revealed he had only leaned about the issue from members of the public rather than the council itself.