Time we had a right decision on planning

Worcestershire County Council has submitted plans for a high school to be built at Earls Court Farm, Bromyard Road.

It would replace Christopher Whitehead High School in St John's, which superstore Tesco hopes to demolish.

Notices of the planning application have been put up around the proposed site.

The planning and regulatory committee will discuss the plans at its meeting in June. No date has yet been fixed.

When - and if - all this happens, yet another chapter in Worcester's planning insanity will have been completed.

But the story will not end there. For it looks as if the looming fight for the green strip between St John's and the Western Bypass will have only just begun . . .

Residents and other people who have opposed the plans in the past say they are angry that the application is proceeding.

The juicy prospect of four different sports fields, as well as tennis courts, woodland and a strategically-placed newt protection area has no doubt been seen for what it is.

This is a sweetener, a bribe. Mention the magic word "newts" and everyone will be conned into thinking how ecologically correct is the whole enterprise.

Except that this time, a growing number of people seem to be ahead of the game.

So let us be clear about this. The number of St John's residents who want this grotesque project to go through can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The reasons are obvious - it is only the bureaucratic mind that cannot/will not see the folly of this scheme.

Why folly? Because it will result in the destruction of a school that many people can easily reach on foot in favour of one that most will be forced to reach by car.

It is also folly because the relentless - and predicted - infil up to the bypass will move into top gear.

Every time a new road is built in this country, it is regarded by vested interest as being a convenient point on the horizon that must reached, with the intervening land looked on as nothing more than space ripe for suffocating in concrete.

This is the reality. For ring-roads, bypasses and motorways are all treated by developers as new boundaries to be reached with bricks and mortar. Green Belt, once held as being sacrosanct, is now merely treated as one more irritating obstacle to be overcome.

Then there is the planning appeals system, whereby councils are bled dry of cash as costs escalate so much that the perceived wisdom is that it's better and cheaper to capitulate early on in order to avoid costing the taxpayer too much.

Oh yes, and one more reason under the heading of folly. Because what else is the very notion of destroying a perfectly good school so that it can be replaced by a commercial outlet?

It is banal at best and obscene at worst, sacrificial vandalism at the altar of profit.

The catalogue of madness does not stop there. The county council - the authority responsible for highways - says it will also widen Bromyard Road to ease traffic congestion.

Are these people really off their rockers? So Bromyard Road is widened - and becomes the racetrack that is the inevitable fate of all roads when they are "improved".

When someone is injured or, heaven forbid, killed, there will then follow a programme of traffic-calming as sure as night follows day.

Have you ever come across Bromyard Road Action Group? You will my friend, you will.

Does no one, anyone, ever learn from past mistakes? Do these councillors and their pen-pusher accomplices never profit from experience?

But thank God for County Councillor Richard Udall, who represents the St John's Ward.

Quite rightly, he says that the proposed site for the school is not ideal as it is out of the city. "Parents fearful about their children's safety will revert to taking their children to school by car," he says.

"This will further gridlock the area, forcing cars to rat-run through the Dines Green estate.

"All local and informed opinion suggests that this is a very poor and ill-informed proposal.

"Local residents have proven to be no pushover. They will fight, fight and fight again to prevent this."

Hear, hear Councillor Udall - a rare example of one of our local politicians talking some good sense.

However, these are not the only powerful forces at work around Worcester.

As the battle for a school takes shape on one side of Worcester, another skirmish is hotting up to the south of the city.

The controversy surrounding the relocation attempt by Worcester City Football Club is a mirror image of the Earls Court Farm issue.

What do these projects have in common? The answer's easy - they are both ridiculous adventures, utterly bereft of logic. On the one hand, you have football officials becoming dewy-eyed as visions of super-stadia flash across assorted eyeballs.

On the other, B&Q sizes up a nice slice of greenfield land, ripe for a massive warehouse with a football club tacked on the side like some kind of afterthought.

No wonder people are worried. If all this comes to pass, the residents of Spetchley Road/Swinesherd Way vicinity will have an immense industrial-sized development plonked right on their doorsteps.

Light pollution, acres of concrete and tarmac, parking problems, rat-runs, congestion and noise. Wonderful.

Meanwhile, as the city bursts out on all sides, valuable land is gobbled up at a fantastic rate. And for what?

So that a few hundred people can rattle around in a stadium built for thousands. Yes, go on - tell me it makes sense.

I'm no more fooled by the picture of a smiling headmaster dreaming of his new school than all the incessant hype about the new football stadium.

So this is what should be done. Leave the latter where it belongs . . . in St George's Lane.

And leave Chrissies where it sits best, in the heart of the community it serves, that village outside the city known as St John's.

It's high time Worcester made some right decisions for once.

In a city cursed with what appears to be terminal planning blight, I don't think that's too much to ask. Do you?