Council reassessing plan to fence off school field

Peterborough City Council's cabinet will discuss its earlier decision to allow part of the fields to be fenced off

Councillors are to once again discuss whether part of a school field should be fenced off, due to safeguarding concerns.

In July, Peterborough City Council said Ken Stimpson Academy could fence off around a third of the area known as Werrington Fields.

The school had stopped using part of it around three years earlier over safeguarding concerns for its pupils who played sports there.

But the decision was bounced back to the council's Labour administration after some councillors asked for it to be reviewed. The meeting is being held later.

The row over Werrington Fields dates back to 2019, when the council first proposed fencing on the land.

Since then, the council’s administration has changed and the school has become an academy.

The school says its pupils have been deprived of land where they should have been able to have PE lessons.

It says it has concerns over school children sharing the space with members of the public, and about children potentially "absconding during games lessons".

Meanwhile, the Save the Werrington Fields campaign group says the local community have coexisted with the school for more than 40 years, and the land is used for exercise and by dog walkers.

What happens next?

The most likely outcome from the meeting at Town Hall is that the council will reaffirm its original decision.

This would mean that Area C of the fields will be fenced off, with the council paying up to £40,000 towards costs.

Ken Stimpson Academy would also enter into an agreement with the council which would allow “community use” of the area outside school hours.

The council has previously said Area C of Werrington Fields would be fenced off

But there are two other options, laid out in council papers.

The first of these is to refer the decision to a meeting attended by all councillors.

But this would be "merely putting off the inevitable", the papers say.

It has also happened before, without resolving the row.

The second is to overturn the original decision to fence off Area C and reopen negotiations between the council and the school, with a view to fencing off a smaller area of land.

The council says, though, that this would be unlikely to be accepted by the academy.

It also says this presents a risk of the "permanent loss of school playing field land, and even potential development of Area C at some point in the future".