Th, Jan 19, 2006Petitioning against misinformation
At last week's Mayor and Cabinet meeting the Cabinet Member for Education Cllr Katy Donnelly, commenting on the approval of the Strategic Business Case, the document that describes the school funding sought by Lewisham Council said:"The investment comes as a whole. "If there are parts of this package that people wish to object to they need to recognise that fact"
This is in open contradiction with what the document say about itself:
"The SBC is intended to be a living document, refreshed and approved by the Council annually, taking account of a developing visions, emerging policies and new issues that will feed back into the strategies for the continuing delivery of improved educational attainment in future years."
The same document also acknowledges a degree of risk in pursuing Ladywell as a site for the New School and that should be clear to anybody that read through the document approved by Mayor and Cabinet last Wednesday:
"The proposed new school proposals for the Ladywell Leisure Centre site will have implications for the re-provision of leisure facilities elsewhere in Lewisham Town Centre. Depending on the level of certainty over such a re-provision, an application for the proposed new school would, more than likely, represent a departure from the Unitary Development Plan and would therefore be referable to both the GLA and GOL."
Cllr Katy Donnelly is either ignoring the important papers she comments on or is trying to deceive the people of Lewisham when she suggests that they can only have improvements in their secondary schools if they also accept the plan to knock down Ladywell Leisure Centre and build a school on the busy main road site.
At next Council meeting we'll deliver a petition asking Cllr Donnelly to either acknowledge the content of the document she commented on and change her comment accordingly or resign.
We must send a strong message that we know where we stand and cannot accept that senior members of the Council give to the public misleading statements on important details of the Council's policies.
We start collecting signatures now and we have only 5 days to collect as many signatures as possible.
Council Meeting is next Wednesday 25th January at 7:30 pm.
Please help collecting signatures on this petition.
You can either:
- download and print one or more petition sheets, collect signatures and give them to us before next week's Council Meeting or
- help on Saturday's campaigning table outside Lewisham Library. ...read more...