Save Rumney Recreation Ground & Eastern Leisure Centre
RREEL Action Group
Latest News
Cardiff
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 16:56
Leading pressure-group the Open Spaces Society(1) has added its support to the Rumney Recreation and Eastern Leisure Centre Action Group (RREEL Action Group),(2) which is fighting a decision to build a new school on parkland known as the Rumney Recreation Ground in east Cardiff.
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Letter to Viewpoints
22nd May 2009
Last Thursday, after the deadline for objections to statutory notices to build a new school on the Rumney Recreation Ground, the Council confirmed that land at St. Mellons, earmarked for a secondary school, is surplus to requirements and will be sold for residential development.
Consideration of this site for a new secondary school was conveniently omitted from Councils consultation with stakeholders in November 2007. Receipts from the sale of this land will be invested in the Schools Organisation Programme.
Aside from taking the Rumney Recreation Ground to manipulate sale of the Rumney and Llanrumney school sites,
proceeds from this land will be used to benefit other areas of the City.
The site has scope for a new school in the Trowbridge/St. Mellons wards, an area that will experience major housing development and move the centre of secondary school catchment substantially closer to this locality.
Why did the Council, which stated that all possibilities would be explored, not include this site in its deliberations and reporting? Why is it asset stripping an area of known social deprivation?
During 22 months of widespread condemnation of Council proposals, Liberal Councillor for Trowbridge, Geraldine Grant stands alone from nine other, local, cross-party Councillors and makes no public comment on the location of the new school. For a scheme having major implications for the education and future of children in the Trowbridge and St. Mellons , is it not time that Councillor Grant stopped sitting on the fence and gave electors the benefit of her views?
Mel Plenty
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Council failed to field this alternative for new school
June 9 2009 by David James South Wales Echo
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CITY HALL DEMONSTRATION
Council ‘didn’t receive school’s response’
April 20 2009 by Moira Sharkey, South Wales Echo
Videos of Cllrs. Berman and McEvoy
We have taken a leaf out of the Council's book and updated.
These two video clips are extracts taken from our
( "21st Century State of The Art" )
HD digital video minutes of our meeting held on Tuesday 3rd February 2009.
Statements were made at that meeting by both Cllr Berman and Cllr McEvoy. You can watch what they said here:
Cllr Berman advises not to let politicians mislead you.
Appearances can be deceiving
Don't let anyone tell you what to believe, watch the videos, read the articles, see the contradiction for yourself and make up your own mind.
It seems that these two clips contradict the statement recently made in the South Wales Echo Saturday Feb 21 (see link below).
Compromise offered to Rumney Recreation Ground Campaigners
Feb 21 2009 by Moira Sharkey, South Wales Echo
Berman under fire on school
Feb 13 2009, South Wales Echo
FURTHER to the Echo story “Tough for Berman at Public Meeting” (February 4), may I express some sympathy for the council leader.
He was not helped at the meeting by being encumbered with the council’s deputy leader, Neal McEvoy (from Plaid Cymru). His posturing at the meeting and apparent U-turn over building a new secondary school on the Rumney Recreation Ground infuriated the 200 members of the public who attended.
However, it was Rodney Berman’s choice to bring along this individual. Rodney and his Liberal Democrat council administration chose to go into coalition with Plaid Cymru and accept their terms.
Rodney also chose to attack the residents of Rumney and Llanrumney by proposing to build the school on this site when there is a perfectly acceptable alternative site nearby.
Rodney claims he needs to sell the Rumney High School site in order to pay to build the school but I do not believe this is true.
According to Rodney, the net difference for the council between building a new school on the Rumney High School site or on the Rumney Recreation Ground is £5.6m.
Rodney’s comments would be more believable if the council were not at this very moment consulting (at Neil McEvoy’s behest) on a proposal to build a one-form entry primary school in west Cardiff for £5.6m.
This proposal is contrary to the council’s education policy.
It seems that the residents of east Cardiff have to lose Rumney Recreation Ground in order to shore up the Lib Dem coalition with Plaid Cymru.
If Rodney Berman is finding life tough at the moment he has only himself to blame.
Coun Ralph Cook
MEET ALUN MICHAEL MP AND LORRAINE BARRATT AM
MEETINGS
Our meeting on Tuesday evening was well attended by around two hundred of our members as well as our five invited guests. For various reasons the original agenda of the meeting was revised and actually ran over time by a half hour.
Tuesday, 3 February, 7.30pm at the British Legion
Echo report on our meeting.
A South Wales Echo reporter, Clare Hutchinson, was present at the meeting on Tuesday.
You can read her report here (by clicking on the link below:) and also watch a short piece of video of one of the highlights of the meeting where Deputy Leader Cllr. Neil McEvoy gave an evasive non-answer to a perfectly good question (as had been his established tactic up until then), ranting on about something that had nothing to do with the question asked. He then chose to provoke the members of the public present at the meeting, with an insulting, ageist question ("How many people here, under forty; for example?"); which led to the response from the Chairman of RREEL of turning off the mike and asking Cllr. McEvoy to leave the meeting. Rodney Berman then pleaded for Cllr. McEvoy to be allowed to stay and promised to keep him under control for the remainder of the meeting.
As can be clearly seen, in this short piece of video, Cllr McEvoy appeared to be uninformed, as to what it is that the members of this action group and the residents of Rumney and Llanrumney are actually opposed to, as well as, about what they are actually in favour of. One would have thought that Cllr McEvoy would have taken the trouble to inform himself better about this before attending and speaking at our meeting.
I would therefore suggest that Cllr McEvoy educate himself about this, perhaps by reading this web site and in particular, I would refer his attention to the "Home" page where this is explained quite adequately in the second paragraph.
