THINK ABUT THE CHILDREN

6 June 2005

Though I have no children of school age and no vested interest in either a Welsh school or Grange Primary I find the logic of the present Swansea Council difficult to understand - particularly after the incompetence of the previous council

To build a new school for up to 400 pupils on a greenfield site in West Cross seems to be the height of folly, if only from the point of view of the amount of traffic it will generate, as presumably most of the children will have to be bussed in. This could mean up to 10 buses and many extra cars using and waiting twice a day in an already narrow lane, which is only single track in places and which already has a doctors surgery and a health clinic as well as the two existing schools.

Much of this extra traffic will then end up adding to the already congested Mumbles Road.

The proposed site is at present much appreciated for its mature trees and wildlife by adults and children alike, and is just not large enough to house a school the size that is envisaged.

What will happen when expansion is needed?

To close several existing schools (causing even more traffic congestion) seems ludicrous. Surely one of these schools could be used as the proposed Welsh school.

What is to happen to children currently in West Cross Children's Home, which is planned to be demolished - a building only six-years-old.Are they to have a new and even more costly building? If so, where?

I ask the council to stop and think about the hundreds of children involved in this ridiculous musical chairs, instead of merely thinking of ways to spend the taxpayer's money on what appears to be another ill-conceived and rushed decision.

Mrs P Rance, Plunch Lane, Mumbles, Swansea