Copland land deal for rebuild and academisation

Ariel view of site. Copland is at the top on the High Road, St Josephs top right at end of  Chatsworth/Waverley and Elsley bottom right at end of Tokyngton

The Brent Executive on April 22nd LINK will discuss a land deal for the Copland Community School site and adjacent lands. Copland is due to become the Ark Elvin academy on September 1st 2014. Government money has been made available for a rebuild which also involves adding another form of entry.   Copland has suffered from an inadequate building for a long time and this has been mentioned in its Ofsted reports.

The previous headteacher Sir Alan Davies and the governing body had plans for redevelopment approved in 2006 which included the 'Copland Village' but these plans were never realised.  The land involved is currently in multi-ownership:

The Council intends to hand the land over to Ark on a 125 year lease and at the same time secure land for the necessary playspace and land for the expansion of Elsley Primary school which will double in size from two forms of entry to four. Current consultation on Elsley's expansion has been halted until the land issue is resolved.

The report states:

Copand Community School is a foundation school and therefore the land and buildings are mainly in the ownership of the school itself, the responsibility for which is vested in the Interim Executive Boards. The IEB has expressed agreement to transfer the freehold of the site which it currently owns to the Council instead, in order for the Council to rationalise the ownership and use of the site overall, ensuring an optimum footprint for the school. The ARK would under these proposals be granted a 125 year lease on the final school site.

 As part of these transactions, the Council would secure enough land from the overall site to facilitate the proposed expansion of Elsley Primary School.

On completion of the freehold transfer the Council will grant the ARK an interim lease agreement to allow occupation of the existing school building until the new building is completed. Following this a 125 year lease arrangement will be granted. The transfer from the IEB needs to happen before the conversion to Academy Status, because the IEB will cease to exist on the conversion date, proposed for 1st September.

The land transaction proposals in the report are dependent on the Secretary of State for Education agreeing to disposal of education land, and specific consent surrounding disposal of school playing fields, this is an absolutely critical point referred to further in section 6 below and the confidential appendix 1.

Section 6 outlines how school playing field disposal has to be approved by the Secretary of State. Because most of the appendices have been declared confidential it is not easy to see just how much of the playing fields will be needed for the new build. There will have to be a statutory  consultation:

Therefore, prior to any disposal or change of use of school land the relevant statutory process will need to be followed. The relevant statutory process that applies will depend upon who owns the said land (for example a governing body of a school, or local authority), and whether the land is playing field land, or non-playing field land. Each process for consent and/or notification has its own specific requirements and complexities.

The scheme would involve commercial development and housing on the present Wembley High road site of the school realising the Wembley Plan's vision of a shopping street from Wembley Central Station to the London Designer Outlet close to Wembley Stadium. The amount of housing and the proportion of it that will be affordable is not stated in the public documentation.

The report says that the new school building  will be behind the present one as envisaged in the plans approved in 2006. (Below) Note the East-West orientation of this plan: