Lynne Featherstone

Attend public meeting at Tetherdown School where they are discussing the plans for expansion. The first scheme was fabby but too expensive – about £7 million. Haringey Council then came up with ugly, grotesque schemes – costing about £4 million.

Thank goodness the parents protested – the school would have been ruined by the brutality of the council scheme. Pressure from campaigning on lack of school places in the Muswell Hill area seems to have spurred the Government into extra spondulicks – so that at least now there is a version of the first scheme in its infancy at around £5 million from which something good can be delivered.

There is a balance to be struck, as one woman in the audience pointed out, between the desperate need to provide more places double-quick as so many children can’t get into local schools – and rushing and creating a monster.

It’s another burden placed on local schools and families by the council’s failure to plan ahead properly for school places in the first place.