I am being asked this quite a lot. Below is the most comprehensive briefing note to hand. As you can see, they are now admitting that there is a need for a new school – which I first asked for in 2006, only to be told that there was no evidence that there was a problem. Even though I am glad they now admit that I was right, there is still no sense of urgency – despite that fact that there is an obvious site – namely the land bordered by Alma, London, Lattimore and Bedford Roads, which Tesco has its eye on.

Interestingly, the same problem has now cropped up two years on in Watford, showing that county have not learned anything about the limitations of their forecasting systems.

# In December 2006 an increase in the number of reception age children in St Albans was identified once applications for 2007-08 had been received.
# As a response to this, capacity was provided in 2007 through provision of temporary buildings for 1 f.e [one form of entry] for one year only at each of Maple, St Peters and Aboyne Lodge schools.
# Investigation of the forecast and raw data sets showed that the demand for schools places would be sustained, and that in the long term an additional 4 FE would be required to provide sufficient capacity in the city. In parallel, work was undertaken to identify school sites which could accommodate a permanent increase of 1FE and to identify any non-school sites which could accommodate a new primary school.
# This work identified only three schools in the city which could expand by 1 FE (Bernards Heath, Mandeville and Margaret Wix). As such, in 2008-09 1 fe of additional capacity was provided at Bernard’s Heath Infant School, which will need to flow through the Junior School in due course, and we are going through due process for this is to become permanent.
# In the same year we also raised Mandeville School by 1 fe temporarily and are moving to make that permanent too.
# There was no opportunity to implement an alternative solution within the timescale available, even if a site had been identified (which it was not).
# This has met a need within and around the centre of St Albans but there remains a need to find another 2 f.e. preferably to the west of, and around Aboyne Lodge School.
# Colleagues continue to talk to district council officers about site potential and this will form part of the on going LDF process.
# In the absence of that solution so far, we have proposed temporary increases of 1 f.e. each at Cunningham Hill Infants and Margaret Wix for 2010. While this isn’t in that location they are on the edge of the central area within the city where the greatest demand is being experienced.
# We’ll be keeping a sharp eye on levels of need when our next forecast is produced