Questions abound following academy trust’s sell-off of secondary school’s land for housing
Questions in this case are being asked around issues of public vs private ownership of land. Image: iStock
Anglian Learning's sale of plot on which former caretaker's house sat shines a light on public/private debate around land ownership in the academies sector.
An academy trust cut down trees next to a caretaker’s house, then sold off the land for property development, in a revelation which raises fresh questions about the seeming privatisation of publicly-funded school grounds.
Anglian Learning, which runs 18 academies in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex, sold the plot of land including the former caretaker’s house at the Netherhall School in Cambridge to a property developer in September last year, for £675,000.
Because the former local authority community school had changed its status before becoming an academy back in 2016, the land could be sold freehold, rather than leasehold, with the local authority therefore not receiving any benefit.
The case raises questions as to the detail of how the money was spent, whether the trust was right to cut down trees which were about to receive Tree Preservation Orders and, following a response from Anglian Learning, reveals that the land was not put out to public tender.
It is also raising wider questions about what critics see as the privatisation of land ownership under the academies policy, particularly in cases where academy trusts have been passed control of land on a freehold basis.
Anglian Learning said the land had been sold so that funds “could then be used to improve facilities for the school’s students,” and that these improvements had been “warmly welcomed by students at the school”.
In a comment supporting a planning application shortly after it was submitted by a housing developer in December 2022, Netherhall’s principal said the sale would be used to fund “much-needed capital developments,” by implication at the school.
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By Warwick Mansell for EDUCATION UNCOVERED
Published: 19 September 2025
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The pertinent sentence in the article is the quote from Tony Booth, "Before the advent of academies, he argued, schools and their land “belonged to the people”. That was no longer the case." The acadamisation process has been an extension of the sell-off of public assets into private hands which started in Thatcher's time and has only continued and accelerated since then (remember Thatcher said her greatest success was Tony Blair). School "sell offs" have been a part of this and are an element of neoliberalism which has included the removal on parental and community representation in academies, the use of the language of business not education (CEO, CFO etc ...) the huge increase in senior staff salaries not matched among other staff or even in some cases, as reported by this site, oppressed and abused.