29th August 2026
Nearly two decades after Stockport Council approved a primary school on a former public playing field in North Reddish, a basic question remains unresolved: was the replacement sporting provision used to justify that loss ever actually delivered — and if so, where is it now?
The Justification at the Time
The Harcourt Street site earmarked for what became Vale View Primary School had, by the council’s own admission, an existing recreational use. The planning officer’s report on the application acknowledged the land was used “informal for recreation and more formally for organised sport,” and accepted this would generate a “degree of noise” for the community even before the school was built.
Losing that open playing field to development would normally trigger Sport England’s Playing Fields Policy, under which such a loss is expected to be offset by equivalent or better replacement provision. Rather than pointing to a separate replacement site, the officer’s report took a different approach: it argued that the new school’s sports facilities, made available to the community outside school hours, would “meet Sport England requirements” and deliver wider societal benefit — citing hours of operation extending to 9pm on weekdays and 6pm at weekends.
What the Council Said Would Be Built
Correspondence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007 shows the council’s own figures for what this was meant to cost and include. Officers stated that beyond the roughly £7.6 million core cost of the school, a further £625,000 had emerged through the planning process specifically to meet national and local policy requirements and extended works at and around the school. The council said this sum covered “new recreational facilities at the Harcourt Street site,” explicitly listing a newly laid out sports pitch, a multi-use games area, additional changing facilities, and landscaping to formalise footpath routes and improve the visual appearance of the remaining open space “in community use.”
The same correspondence reveals this funding was tied to the sale of a separate council asset, the former Fir Tree Nursery site. Officers stated the capital receipt from that sale represented a significant element of the funding for the wider package, and that losing it would “jeopardise delivery of the project.” When questioned about the figures, officers were unable to fully account for a discrepancy of around £100,000 between the Fir Tree site’s stated net value and the amount actually being credited against the Harcourt Street scheme.
What Was Found Afterward
By 2013, questions about whether this promised provision had materialised remained unanswered. Repeated queries to council executive councillors about the “missing” replacement playing fields at Harcourt Street were dismissed as “vexatious” rather than substantively addressed. Separate information obtained through a further Freedom of Information request around the same time indicated that a different piece of sports infrastructure — a Multi-Use Games Area developed with Reddish North End Football Club, funded by a £418,000 Football Foundation grant alongside a £60,000 council “Formal Sports Commuted Sum” and £3,000 from the NHS — was located not at Harcourt Street but at the former Fir Tree Nursery site instead.
More than a decade further on, a direct enquiry to the school found no sporting facilities available for general public use. A Multi-Use Games Area does exist on site, but appears to function as a pupil play surface rather than a bookable or publicly accessible community facility, with no evidence of the booking systems, published opening hours, or public access arrangements typically associated with genuine community sports provision. The only outside use identified was a fee-based holiday club run by a private coaching company during school holidays — commercial, child-only provision, not open community access.
The Unanswered Question
Two contradictory pictures now sit side by side on the public record. In 2007, the council stated in writing that specific, funded, on-site facilities — a sports pitch, a MUGA, changing rooms — had been built at Harcourt Street as part of meeting planning policy requirements. Separately, a different piece of promised sports infrastructure appears to have been delivered miles away at Fir Tree instead, funded through different channels entirely. And today, no route to public use of any sporting facility at the Harcourt Street site can be identified, despite that public community access being the specific justification originally used to accept the loss of the site’s existing playing field.
Stockport Council has been asked repeatedly, over many years, to clarify what became of the replacement provision. It has not provided a substantive answer, and questions on the subject have been characterised as vexatious rather than addressed. Whatever the explanation, a straightforward and answerable question — was the community sporting provision that justified building over a public playing field ever actually delivered and made accessible to the public — has now gone unanswered for the better part of two decades.
