OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from Jay Valvona, Ryde. Ed
Like most of the parents of children at the six Island schools earmarked for closure next year, I was shocked and saddened to hear the news earlier this week, after the council report was published.
To summarise, the timeline is as follows:
- 1th2 September: The Isle of Wight Council’s Cabinet will decide, based on this report, whether to enter a consultation stage.
- 20th September – 1st November Initial consultation meetings will take place in all schools identified for closure, and a report outlining the consultation responses received will be written.
- December The Isle of Wight Council’s Cabinet will decide based on the report of the Initial consultation, whether to proceed to the formal statutory consultation stage.
- As yet unspecified four week period between December and March A statutory Public Notice would be published. This is a four-week period in which any representations can be made to the local authority.
- March 2025 The final decision will be made
- 31st August 2025 Actual closure of schools if the decision was made to proceed with the plans.
The report states that for this initial meeting regarding its suggestion:
“Questions may be asked without notice but to guarantee a full reply at the meeting, a question must be put including the name and address of the questioner by delivery in writing or by electronic mail to Democratic Services at [email protected], no later than two clear working days before the start of the meeting. The deadline for written questions will be Monday 9th September 2024.”
Email questions
I would strongly encourage any parents with questions about this proposal to email them to that email address by Monday.
If any member of the public was hoping to attend the meeting the guidelines are as follows:
“Should you wish to participate as a member of the public to express your views where public speaking is allowed under the Council’s normal procedures, then you will need to seek a dispensation to do so.
“Dispensations are considered by the Monitoring Officer following the submission of a written request.
“Dispensations may take up to two weeks to be granted.”
A reasonable question might be “why were we not given enough notice about this meeting to obtain a dispensation to allow us to attend?!”
