PLANS to change the way a new primary school is built on Daventry’s Monksmoor estate have been met with caution by campaigners.
Crest Nicholson, the developer of the 1,000-home estate which will be built to the north of Daventry Country Park, will put proposals to Daventry District Council’s (DDC) planning committee on Wednesday (June 27).
The present agreement gives responsibility for building the school to the developer and for there to be no more than 300 homes until the school had been provided.
But Crest says that delivery of the school at this stage of the development ‘would not be viable’.
The developer says it has reached an agreement with Northamptonshire County Council (NCC) to the effect that rather than building the school it would make a financial contribution before the 300th home is built.
The amount will be calculated in accordance with a “standard formula” and the cash would be held in an account which NCC would only be able to draw upon for purposes of providing primary schooling for the Monksmoor development.
NCC would be required to deliver the school no later than two years after the date of the grant of planning consent for the school or occupation of the 300th home, whichever was the later.
This proposal will be put to DDC, but some councillors fear it may lead to a primary school never being built on the site.
There are worries the Monksmoor development could follow the same path as Middlemore, an estate which was promised a school before it was built, but still doesn’t have one.
NCC councillor for Daventry west Chris Long said: “As far as I’m concerned I object to anything that puts in doubt the delivery of a new school in Daventry, and this proposal seems to do that.
“Any developer who wants to build houses in the town needs to provide infrastructure for the people who are going to live in the houses they build.
“It does raise concerns when they say they are not going to do it themselves, especially when we see the financial pressures that local authorities are under.
“We have seen what’s happened on Middlemore when people were promised a school which never came, we don’t want a repeat of that on Monksmoor.”
“It’s happened before and we have to be concerned it could happen again.”
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