The report following the consultation on the expansion of Dundonald Primary recommends that the Council take formal steps to permanently expand the school. That report can be seen here.

A summary of the consultation responses can be seen here.

In broad terms, the break down is as follows:

Parents of current pupils at Dundonald 55
24 positive (43%), 24 negative (43%), 7 other (13%)

Parents with pre-school children 64
42 positive (66%), 12 negative (19%), 10 other (16%)

Local residents including interested groups/not stated 267
55 positive (20%), 186 negative (70%), 26 other (10%)
——
Total 386
121 positive (31%), 222 negative (58%), 43 other (11%)

A great weight seems to have been placed on the views of the 42 parents of pre-school age children who supported the scheme. However, this misses out the fact that a number of those who don’t currently have children of that age (recorded as “Local resident no interest”) may go on to do so, and also that there were a number of people who didn’t specify whether or not they were an existing parent or not.

Given the lack of primary places in this part of Merton, if the scheme had popular support one might have expected many more parents of young children living nearby to reply to the consultation and speak out in favour of it.

Lastly, the report glibly dismisses the problems with the consultation – saying:

Some respondents queried the validity of the consultation process. However, council officers do not accept that this had any material impact on the consultation responses, and the council has provided detailed responses to residents that wrote to the council in regard to this.

We questioned the process – see here – and have had no such “detailed response”.