The campaign to save three local High Schools from closure by Wigan Council intensified this week with the formal submission by local residents and save our school campaigners of their Village Green status application to protect the land at Hesketh Meadow in Lowton.
Should the application succeed, which campaigners are confident of having collected the required documentary evidence, then it will bring to an abrupt halt Wigan Council's proposals to build a PFI financed 'Monster' school at the Hesketh Meadow site.
It will also as a direct result, throw a successful life line to the closure threatened Golborne & Lowton High Schools, and Lowton J & I , all three of which the proposed new 'Monster' school was intended to replace.
Speaking on behalf of the local UNISON and UNITE the Union backed campaign against the Council's 'Building Schools for the Future' (BSF) programme roll out across the borough, Stephen Hall said: "We are delighted that the application for Village Green status at Hesketh Meadow has now been submitted and hope the hard work and effort of local residents will pay off in saving the land from this unwanted development. Its success will amount to a huge victory for our growing borough-wide campaign against BSF".
Save our schools campaigners are leaving nothing to chance however, and have a whole series of other meetings, events and activities organised to oppose the Council's school closure plans;
In relation to Golborne High School, parents and local residents will be meeting at 7.30pm on Wednesday 23rd September at GOLBORNE SPORTS & SOCIAL CLUB, STONECROSS LANE, to discuss the next step in their own campaign, including how to respond to the current proposal by the school's Governors to set up a Foundation Trust school in conjunction with the Governors of Lowton High and the Co-operative College in Manchester.
In relation to the campaign to save Atherton's Hesketh Fletcher High School. Local campaigners will be distributing 10,000 leaflets door-to-door this week encouraging local parents and residents to submit objections before 15th October against the school's closure. The leaflet offers guidance on how to object as well as a list of issues which parents and residents might wish to take up in their objections.
On the reverse of the leaflet there is also a poster which campaign organisers hope people will put up in their windows to show the breadth of opposition to the plans to deprive Atherton of a High School.
Speaking on behalf of the Atherton Demands Its Own High School campaign, a spokesperson said: "We are as determined as ever to stop the closure of our town's high school. Rather than accept what the Council wants to do, which is simply to close the school, any failings of which they themselves are directly responsible for, we are developing at least three alternative proposals to that put forward by the Council, which we will be revealing shortly to the public.
"The key thing at the moment however that we want to push is the need for as many people as possible to get in their objections to the Council's proposal to deprive our town of a high school. If anyone needs any help to do that then they should contact Alan Birtles: 01942 795060 or Stephen Hall: 01942 886645."