THE protests of a number of Chepstow councillors to the shelving of any upgrade of Chepstow School until 2024 have fallen on deaf ears.

On Thursday (5th October) last week Monmouthshire County Council’s cabinet agreed to select the three schools in Abergavenny for the next stage (Band B) of 21st Century Schools Programme.

Chepstow School will now be placed in the third and final stage (Band C) which will not start until 2024 and could start as late as 2029.

Before the cabinet meeting councillors Paul Pavia from Larkfield, David Dovey from St Kingsmark and Louise Brown from Shirenewton submitted a letter making representations about the issues faced by Chepstow School and why its development should not be delayed.

The group of councillors were concerned about the lack of consultation, the need for sizeable remedial works at Chepstow School, the focus on surplus places which both Abergavenny and Chepstow schools face and the lack of assessment of the changes coming as a result of the removal of the Severn Bridge tolls.

At the cabinet meeting Cllr Pavia said: “I think to say we’ve got to go for Abergavenny because we are not sure what is going on in the south is just ludicrous.”

These concerns were further backed by leader of the council’s Labour group, Cll Dimitri Batrouni during the cabinet meeting. 

He said: “I represent an area with 30 per cent child poverty in Bulwark and to be told that their school could potentially not be built until 2029 is a huge blow for Chepstow.

Council leader Cllr Peter Fox acknowledged concerns but stressed the importance the findings produced by MCC’s report and the council’s commitment to upgrade Chepstow School.

“We need to understand you can’t just build a school on a thought, a guess.

“You do need to do the groundwork to understand it and Welsh Government would expect our strategic outline program to be robust and evidenced strongly and the evidence we have at the moment is strongly falling in favour of King Henry VIII School.

Cllr Bob Greenland noted the financial changes which had caused one school to be pushed back.

He said: “We were originally informed by Welsh Government that they would be supplying 70 per cent of funding we would be supplying 30 per cent. Before we got to finalising Band A that had changed to 60/40 and now to 50/50.”

Cabinet member for Children and Young People, councillor Richard John, concluded the discussion saying that even if the money was available for Chepstow School, it might not be built given the uncertainty, but hoped things will become clearer by 2024.

He said: “It is actually a good problem to have, that we only have one secondary school in the entire county that isn’t brand new and state of the art.

“I hope that when we do build Chepstow in Band C that we will be ready for the opening stages of that envelope so that we are not looking as far as 2029.”