Thousands spent on fence row worth it, says school

Spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money on a High Court row over a fence has been worth it, a school's governor says.

Cotham School put up a fence around Stoke Lodge Playing Fields in 2019 after concern about dog mess and other safeguarding issues on the land, which it leases from Bristol City Council.

This upset residents and it was taken down in 2023 when a campaign led to the land being registered as a village green. But Cotham School is challenging the decision to remove it at a judicial review, saying the site is not safe for pupils.

A five-day High Court case between campaigners and the school took place last week, with a ruling set to be announced in the coming months.

The school's chair of governors, Sandra Fryer, said: "We need to have PE and we need these fields."

A spokesperson for the campaign group We Love Stoke Lodge said: "Village green status does not prevent Cotham School doing PE lessons at Stoke Lodge, and we hope in time a more collaborative relationship can be restored with the school."

The High Court, sitting at Bristol Civil and Family Justice Centre, was told the school had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the fence to keep members of the public away from pupils, who have used the fields for PE lessons since the early 2000s.

When the school erected the 6ft (1.82m) fence, residents likened it to the Berlin Wall.

In June 2023, the council voted to protect the field for public use, meaning it could no longer be fenced off.

Ms Fryer said the fence had cost about £30,000. In the years after it was put up, people removed parts of it. She added they now used a different playing field in the city but at a huge cost.

Speaking to the BBC after the hearing, Ms Fryer said: "We estimate that these fields are worth some £20m to the school.

"Whilst we're not using this field we have to rent alternative space at a cost of upwards of £50,000 per annum.

"If you gross that up over the period of the lease, that comes up in excess of £20m so £50,000 plus interest over 110 years. So we need these fields."

She added: "We have 1,700 young people from very mixed communities around inner central Bristol.

"Many of those people live in high-rise flats with no outside space, no chance for sport and exercise."

Residents have previously said the fence deprived them of vital green space, and that it was the last such green space in their area.

The court was told that neither Ofsted, the Department for Education, nor Bristol City Council considered fencing necessary, and that - up and down the country - many schools played sport on shared public fields.

However, Ms Fryer said the school still believed a fence was necessary.

"As a governor I have to sign every year that I am working towards keeping our children safe in school and all my fellow governors have to do it too," she said.

The school's legal case rests on two small signs put up in the mid-1980s by the now defunct Avon County Council warning against trespass.

But campaigners say few people are aware of the signs and locals used the land "as of right", meaning they did not need permission to use it for recreation.

The land was sold to Bristol City Council in 1947 for educational purposes and, in 2011, the school signed a 125-year lease to use it.

Closing submissions are set to be read out at the High Court on 10 February, before a decision is made on a date to be fixed.

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