Protestors: fence battle isn't over

RESIDENTS have vowed to fight on in their battle to stop a school blocking access to playing fields.

Widewell Primary School in Southway was told last week that it did not need planning permission for a controversial fence which it has put up around its 4.7hectares of playing fields.

Residents appeared to have lost their a long-running battle to have the fence removed after councillors on the planning committee decided that the fence was no longer a planning issue, but Southway campaigner Brian Jones said afterwards: "It doesn't end here."

In 2002 Plymouth city councillors voted unanimously to declare fields next to Widewell Primary School surplus to educational needs.

Through an oversight that has yet to be explained by the council, the decision was never enacted and the fields remained a part of the school. They were fenced off in June 2008 when Widewell Primary became a trust school.

Last August the school was ordered by members of the city council to tear down the fence, but instead movedit back eight metres and asked the council's planning department to confirm that the new position meant planning permission was no longer required.

A fence more than a metre high would require planning permission if it was 'adjacent to a highway.'

Any fence over two metres tall requires planning permission.

Planning officers said they believed the Widewell fence no longer needed planning permission in its new position. At eight metres from the pavement on Lulworth Drive, they said, it was no longer considered 'adjacent' to the highway.

After a long argument about the meaning of the word 'adjacent', the planning committee has now decided the school can ask for a lawful development certificate, rather than seeking planning permission.

Kevin Park, for the school, told councillors it had a duty to protect its 230 pupils. "Without the fence the fields would be out of bounds to our pupils," he said.

The school had received more than 300 letters of support and the objectors were 'a small minority', he insisted.

Mr Park denied there was any public right of way over the field. Mr Jones agreed later there was no official right of way but said there had been uninterrupted use for more than 40 years, and residents were asking for it to be put on the map.

"We've heard that the case has been brought up the priority list, and we hope it will be heard soon," he said. "We're disappointed that the school isn't interested in coming to some compromise solution to allow them to protect children and to allow some community use."