For this proposed site to work, Blean Primary school will need to be moved in order to provide road access to the new housing development (and construction vehicles during the course of it being built). The Site C12 proposal includes demolition of the existing school and a new 2-form-entry primary school to replace it somewhere unspecified on the site – with no detail on the timings or realities of how this would work. The plans also say a new 3-form-entry primary school with early years provision would be built, located adjacent to the community hub in the new housing development/town.

Many parents and teachers have serious concerns about how demolishing and moving Blean Primary would impact staff and pupils, and what effect two schools in close proximity would have on education in the area. Blean Primary School is currently an Outstanding primary, the only one in this part of Kent. It is unclear how resources, teachers and pupils would be allocated between the two schools, and parents have raised questions over whether the two would end up competing with each other, or if they would be turned into an Academy Trust to be run jointly.

There have been very few assurances from the Council about how any of this would work in practice, and it is bound to create enormous disruption to Blean Primary School. Parents and staff have great concerns about being located next to a building site for up to 10 years, and what impact this would have on health, safety and wellbeing at the school

Questions from parents to the Head and Chair of Governors have been met with very little information, and they say Kent County Council have not consulted with them. There has been no Education Impact Assessment and no evaluation of the risks and challenges posed by such a complex proposal – to move a working school to a new site on a huge building site.

Blean is a maintained school and the land is owned by KCC, but the Governors do have a say. We understand that the school Governors will be writing their own submission to the Local Plan consultation.

We urge all parents, teachers, staff and governors to feed into the consultation to make sure that concerns are raised now, as this is the last time the public will be invited to feed into the Local Plan process.