How To Fund The School
Building a new school is an incredibly expensive venture requiring upwards of £15m for construction, £5m to acquire land, and several more million for local infrastructure enhancements and a contingency fund. How can this be accomplished when the driving force behind this comes from ordinary mums & dads rather than the authorities and what options are available to us?
Option 1: County Council funding- the County Council have no funds for this and have shown no desire to build a new school in the area.
Option 2: Government funding - the new coallition Government have introduced a "free schools" policy allowing parents to set up new schools. We have applied to become a free school and there may be funding available to construct the school. We are waiting for further details to emerge.
Option 3: Community fund raising - this could take a decade and a phenomenal amount of work to raise the required funds by a large team of people who can afford to donate a significant part of their lives to it.
Option 4: Private donation - we would have to be incredibly lucky to find a hugely wealthy benefactor to pay for land and construction.
Option 5: Self-funding through land donation - a generous benefactor donates land; part of the land is used to build houses to generate sufficient funding to finance the school.
Option 2 has recently become a likely solution. If this comes to fruition there will be NO need to build any housing. We are working very hard to secure funding and obtain more details on this.
Story of the previous funding plan
(This is now out of date due to the above change to option 2)
There is a unique funding opportunity in our area - one that other communities do not have - in that a significant landowner in Knebworth, Knebworth Estates, is committed to donating land in order to endow the Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust (click here for a PDF brochure), a charity that seeks to ensure the restoration and preservation of Knebworth House, as well as improve its educational resources and outreach. The Lytton Cobbold family, who own Knebworth Estates, are long term residents of the community and have always taken an active interest in improving its facilities, while at the same time wishing to preserve Knebworth as sustainable rural community.
When presented with the Government's Local Development Framework (LDF) initiative, which seeks to locate areas in our district appropriate for sustainable residential growth, Knebworth Estates made an offer that, "if residential development was required at Knebworth's village-edge by the LDF, it would look to donate the proceeds to Parish Charities as long as the Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust was a priority." (Knebworth Sites Appraisal Report, December 2007, page 10, para 3.10 at www.KnebworthOptionsReport.org).
In making this offer, Knebworth Estates was opening the possibility that other important local issues - other issues that lie beyond local authority budgets - could also be addressed. Henry Lytton Cobbold of Knebworth Estates, who in 2007 had been working for five years on the team that produced the Knebworth Parish Plan (www.KnebworthParishPlan.org), published two websites at the time that highlighted some of these issues (www.KnebworthGreen.net & www.KnebworthSouth.net). As well as the need for a Secondary School, issues discussed on these websites included stopping the Knebworth Doctor's Surgery from relocating to Stevenage, and maintaining the vibrancy of Knebworth High Street when Chas Lowe's Builders Merchant relocates.
In 2007 no Knebworth village-edge sites were put forward for consideration in the North Herts Local Development Framework, and it seemed unlikely that they would be. However in July of this year, five Knebworth village-edge sites were presented for consideration within the LDF - a public consultation that is now live, and lasts until 14th September. Two of these sites are on Knebworth Estates land - and Knebworth Estates has confirmed that its offer still stands: "Should Knebworth Estates land be chosen 100% of the proceeds will go to Parish Charities" (Knebworth Parish News - September 2009).
The WeNeedaSchool.org campaign has spoken to Henry Lytton Cobbold and he has re-affirmed his commitment to trying to help solve the Secondary School problem. It is a shame that the South Knebworth fields are not part of North Herts District Council's consultation, however, based on the above, it is still possible that significant funds could be raised by Knebworth and Welwyn playing a part in the LDF. Developable land in our area is worth in excess of £1 million an acre. The South Knebworth fields, for instance, are 90 acres - developing on only a third of that site could raise in excess of £30 million, enough both to build a new Secondary School and solve Knebworth House's long-term problems. A Government initiative that otherwise may be seen as a negative, in that we are having to sacrifice green fields, could in this way be turned into something positive, with our community's crucial facilities and heritage benefiting not only from the development itself, but from 100% of the proceeds of the development.
Henry Lytton Cobbold puts it like this: "Nobody wants to lose green fields, but building a self-sufficient, sustainable, and wealthy, community - that does not rely on Stevenage for all of its services - is the best hope Knebworth has of maintaining its green boundaries in the long-term. If Knebworth is self-sufficient with its own schools, doctors, shops and services, it can protect itself as 'Knebworth Village'. If, however, Knebworth becomes totally reliant on Stevenage and simply a residential dormitory, then it is already, in all but name, 'Stevenage South'."
The benefits to the rest of the secondary school's catchment area (Woolmer Green, Datchworth, Oaklands and Codicote) are outlined in The Plan elsewhere on this site. These rural villages would acquire a new school solving many existing problems and also gain new local recreational facilities.
The funding proposal is available to us right now, the offer is on the table. The other options are extremely unlikely to come to light and we would like a new school to open its doors within the next 5 years. Embracing the current offer is the only way to accomplish this dream within a reasonable timeframe while the campaigners and 100's of supporters have children that will be old enough by then to benefit from the new school.