forestgatedotnet

When I first moved to Forest Gate in the late 1980s I lived on Tower Hamlets Road and my walk to the station took me past a small group of almshouses on the corner of Forest Lane and Odessa Road. The buildings are single storey, small, plain and with gabled fronts. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this was known as the Forest Gate Retreat.

The retreat was built by Jabez Legg, who was a Congregational Minister of the Forest Gate church in Sebert Road. He built three almshouses in 1858 and three more in 1863 to accommodate women who had formerly been in domestic service. In 1939 the charity was amalgamated with the Edith Whittuck charity of Wimbledon and renamed the Legg-Whittuck Trust. The Alms-women who live in the retreat can come from any part of the country, but in practice most of them have local connections.

In August 2012 the Legg-Whittuck Trust joined Pathways, a not-for-profit organisation which builds, transforms and supports people and communities to reach their full potential. Pathways now manage the Forest Gate Retreat.

Local people in East Anglia protest about the imposition of an unwanted ‘free school’ in their area

Last week the Department for Education finally acceded to a number of Freedom of Information requests and published a full list of all proposals for new free schools it has received, including information about the proposed religious character of the schools, if stated.

The following is a list of proposals received for schools to be located within Newham:

• Beckton Independent Grammar School
• Britannia Village All Through School
• Eastside Young Leaders Academy Free School
• Little Petals
• Living Word Academy (Free Church Pentecostal)
• Jasper City School (Christian)
• London Academy of Excellence
• Newham Free Academy
• Newham School 21
• Newham College of Further Education

The council has a somewhat ambiguous attitude to free schools. On the one hand, the Labour party is opposed to them and councillor John Gray seconded a motion at the recent London Labour conference to that effect. On the other hand, the mayor has granted a lease on the former offices of the education department in Stratford to the London Academy of Excellence on very generous terms, including the first year rent-free.

I am governor of a Newham school and I am personally opposed to the coalition government’s schools policy. Free schools are an ideological experiment that is diverting resources away from existing schools, whilst academies represent an unprecedented centralisation of control, removing local authorities from their proper place in managing local provision. Giving public money to fringe sects (of whatever religion) to set up new ‘faith schools’ is a recipe for division and disaster. We need our young people to be educated together, side by side, not separated off into sectarian and confessional ghettoes.

Newham council has replied to my FoI request about the cost of publishing statutory public notices.

Over the past 3 years the council has spent close to £119,000 on publishing these notices, more than 95% of it with the Newham Recorder. The balance – a mere £5,500 – went to the in-house Newham Mag. Notices also appear on the council’s website, but that costs nothing.

Sadly Newham couldn’t tell me whether anyone had responded or made enquiries as a result of seeing the published notices, as they do not record that information.

So, as far as we can tell, Newham is handing over an average of £40,000 a year to the Recorder for absolutely no public benefit whatsover. And there’s nothing they can do about it, as the law says they have to.

It is little short of outrageous.