Critics still seeking answers over protracted primary free school project

Building work to convert the former Hackney police station into the Olive free school

If you want to get a taste of what busy, vibrant modern London looks like, you could do worse than visit Lower Clapton Road in Hackney.

As this bus-choked thoroughfare turns abruptly to the right at Urswick Road, you pass a bong shop-cum-watch menders, a Grade II listed public baths and a parade of eclectic shops.

This gives way to pretty treelined gardens where a young woman is practising martial arts on the lawn.

The spot is remarkable for its elegant 19^th century terraced houses and historic church, but one building – now wrapped in scaffolding and plastic – stands out more than most: the red brick former Hackney Central police station.

A giant blue crane now towers over the Grade II listed building, and construction workers are due to fill its modest backyard – constrained by an historic wall - with modern school buildings.

Cars, buses and lorries grind past the entrance to the police station which is set back only a few metres from the road.

This imposing structure, once the focus of policing in the area, has been at the centre of a long-running row that raises, for many, fundamental questions about waste, inefficiency and a lack of logic in the government’s free school project.

It also casts a light on the huge difficulties many schools have faced in realising Michael Gove’s dream of parent-instigated schools based in “pet-shops and funeral parlours”.

School site to open after planning row, and said not to be entirely open on this site until well into the 2020s

The police station, bought by the Department for Education for £7.6million in 2014, is being renovated so it can become the home of The Olive School, a Muslim faith-based free school that was set up in 2013. The school is open to pupils of all religions and none. Rated outstanding by Ofsted in 2015, this three-form-entry primary has been recruiting to capacity every year it has been open, official DfE school census data suggest.

But a long-standing planning row has meant, at least according to those critical of the plans, that the school may only have all its 630 pupils in the police station by 2025 – a full 12 years after it first opened.

An initial application to convert the police station – at the heart of the Clapton Square conservation area – was turned down by Hackney Council in 2016, which cited concerns about traffic, safety and over-development of the extremely tight site.

But this was overturned at a public inquiry in 2017 and the conversion was given the green light by central government later the same year.

However, this was on the condition that the school will introduce just one year group at a time to the new building every year. Campaigners say this means the school will not be fully operational in its long-term home until 2025, although we have been unable to verify this statement with those running the school.

In a recent letter replying to residents’ and Hackney Council’s concerns, academies minister Lord Agnew said he “did not accept” that the site was inappropriate for a school.

The DFE has also fought off criticism from MP Meg Hillier, local Labour MP and chair of the public accounts committee, who said the government paid over the odds for the site.

Until now, The Olive School has been based in two temporary sites nearly three miles apart. The DFE has spent a reported £5 million buying another temporary premises for the school at the nearby BSIX FE college.

This will be used while the school phases in its occupation of the converted police station.

View of local campaigner

Irene Stratton, a former deputy headteacher whose quiet street is being used as the main vehicle access to the site during the build, has been campaigning for a re-think of the project.

While she has understandable concerns about the disruption caused by the works themselves, she stresses her main fear is the sheer number of pupils that the school wants to squeeze into such a small space.

She is worried that children’s safety and well-being could be affected as it has no outdoor play space and is set very close to the main road.

The school says it will operate a system of staggered starts and break times for different year groups to minimise crowding, but Stratton is not convinced this will be in the children’s best interests.

The spiralling costs, thought to be approaching at least £20 million by local campaigners’ calculations, are also a concern.

Mrs Stratton said: “How can you have millions to spend on one school when headteachers are cleaning toilets and cutting teaching assistants in others?”

She added: “It’s almost like Brexit, if the government has a project and a policy like free schools…that’s the policy, it doesn’t matter what anybody says, they just go ahead with it.

“It’s about central government going at a policy without taking into consideration what they are doing, how it impacts on the learning of a child.

 “Nobody would mind about it being a school for 200 children but there would still be issues with space.”

She was keen to stress that residents opposing the school were not being motivated by “nimbyism”.

“We are very clear that the building needs to be used, it’s in everybody’s best interests,” she said, explaining that squatters had at one point turned it into a dumping ground.

She also made it clear that the opposition to the project - renovations are due to be completed in June next year - was not about religion or even the concept of free schools themselves.

“It’s about the way the government is so intransigent and the lack of respect for local people.

“…They [ministers] seem to be completely frightened of saying ‘we made a mistake here’.”

Echoes of Abacus Belsize primary

The row echoes that surrounding the Abacus Belsize Primary School in North West London which wants to move into the former Hampstead Police Station, bought by the DFE for £14.1 million in 2013.

That school has been forced to rethink projected pupil numbers  - 420 to 210 – in a bid to get permission to convert and occupy the building.

Star Academies, the large free school chain which runs The Olive School, has yet to take up an invitation to respond to Stratton’s comments.

Whoever is right in this Hackney debate, one thing is clear: between the vegan freelancers, workers and mums on the way to the swimming pool, the area is a busy one. And only set to get busier with the arrival of a large new primary school.