31st August 2026
When Stockport Council chose the former Jackson’s Brickyard site in North Reddish for a new primary school, it knew the land was an infilled clay pit. Early cost estimates sat around £5.5 million. By September 2007 the figure had risen to £8.5 million, of which a provisional £200,000 was allocated for drainage. Internal project risk registers compiled two months later rated the chance that the Environment Agency would require additional drainage works — and extra cost — as high.
The school, later named Vale View Primary, eventually opened in 2011 after further delays, a revised scheme cost of £9.94 million noted by the Executive in 2008, and a remediation strategy based largely on an engineered clean cover system rather than full removal of contaminated material. Arsenic, lead and asbestos had been confirmed on the site. Children were photographed sitting on the grass during a ceremonial turf-cutting before full remediation was complete.
Drainage, however, remained an unresolved problem. Photographs taken years after opening show large areas of standing water on the school playing fields and adjacent grass. The site sits above an aquifer that drains towards Jackson’s Pond, the home water of Reddish Angling Club.
In June 2015 the Manchester Evening News reported that the angling club had threatened to take Stockport Council to court. The club said it had agreed in writing to allow the pond to serve as an overflow for excess water from the school fields, on condition that proper drainage was installed. According to club officials, the pipe that was provided was only half the agreed size and frequently blocked. The pond flooded repeatedly after 2011. Members spent more than £8,000 of their own funds raising the banking by 18 inches and on at least one occasion called the fire service to pump water away. Long periods followed when the pond was unusable. The Council acknowledged the difficulties, said roots had been cleared from the pipe, but accepted that the problem had not been solved.
Despite the clear documentary trail — the provisional sum, the high risk rating in 2007, the post-opening waterlogging and the angling club’s public dispute — attempts to obtain a final account of how much was actually spent on drainage, and whether the system performed as designed, have been frustrated for years. Freedom of Information and Environmental Information requests on the subject have been refused, delayed or blocked.
Monitoring Officer Vicki Bates is reported to regard continued questions about the drainage at the Harcourt Street / Vale View site as vexatious, in the same manner in which she has treated persistent inquiries about drainage problems at Padden Brook. Campaigners argue that applying the “vexatious” label to long-standing, evidence-based concerns has the practical effect of closing down legitimate public scrutiny of spending and environmental performance on a contaminated former tip that drains into a local fishing pond.
Stockport Council and the Monitoring Officer were approached for comment.
