31st August 2026
For more than five years Councillor Mark Weldon was the public face of Stockport Council’s determination to build a new primary school on the former Jackson’s Brickyard tip in North Reddish. As Executive Member for Children & Young People he defended the project through rising costs, contamination discoveries, capacity shortfalls and resident protests. Documents and contemporary reports now paint a more complicated picture of his role.
In a well-publicised ceremony, Weldon was photographed preparing to cut the turf for the new school while surrounded by young children from North Reddish and Fir Tree primary schools. The children, wearing hard hats and high-visibility vests, sat and knelt on the grass of the former tip site. At that stage the land was still known to contain elevated levels of lead, arsenic and asbestos; full remediation had not been completed. The image was presented as a positive community moment. Critics later described it as placing children on contaminated ground for a publicity photograph.
Weldon also gave repeated public assurances about the site. In a formal letter dated 6 April 2009 he told resident Sheila Oliver that none of the seven acres of public open space required under a 1982 Section 52 Agreement was included in the school’s Compulsory Purchase Order and that the Council did not intend to build on that protected land. Residents continued to argue that the overall loss of open space was significant and that the boundaries of the 1982 land had never been precisely fixed. There was a loss of public open space for the community.
On the question of cost and democratic process, further tensions emerged. In early March 2008, before the revised £9.94 million scheme had been formally considered by the Executive, Weldon was reported in the local press as announcing details of the school’s progress. An email from Mrs Oliver the same week noted that the announcement had been made “before the decision had been made by the Executive Committee.” When she challenged the figures at an Executive meeting, Weldon later wrote that he had assumed she had confused the simple build cost with the total project cost — an assumption he said had “proven to be correct.” The cost of the school rose from £5.5 million to over £11 million. The costs doubled.
Separate from the school project, Weldon’s own planning record came under scrutiny. In 2019 he submitted a householder application for dormer works at his home in Romiley. The application form stated that the works had already been started without consent on 1 August 2018 and completed without consent on 20 December 2018. The application was therefore retrospective. On the form he declared his status as an elected member of Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council.
The hand picking of the lethal asbestos fibres was a joke. Migrant workers who didn’t understand the task because they take off their respirators, picking up asbestos fibres with a bin bag and a stick. It would be a joke if residents’ and childrens’ lives weren’t being put at risk.
Throughout the long controversy over the Harcourt Street site, Weldon maintained that the Council was acting properly. In September 2010 he told the Stockport Express that remediation was being carried out correctly, that earlier surveys had not shown evidence of the toxic chemicals local people claimed had been dumped, and that there was “nothing unusual about public health in the area.” Campaigners, including Hilda Palmer of the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre, continued to argue that the site should never have been chosen for a school and that the precautionary principle had been set aside.
The school eventually opened as Vale View Primary after extensive delays, a doubling of the early cost estimate, a cover-system remediation of the contaminated ground, and post-opening road-safety measures. The contemporary record — photographs, letters, risk registers, FOI replies and Weldon’s own planning application — leaves a series of uncomfortable questions about the standards applied to both the project and the councillor who championed it.
Separately, Weldon’s own planning record attracted criticism. In 2019 he was forced to seek retrospective planning permission for dormer extensions at his home in Romiley after the works had already been started and completed without consent. The application form recorded that building began in August 2018 and finished in December 2018. When the case reached the Council’s planning committee, opposition members described the retrospective application as “deplorable.” Weldon rejected the criticism as “cowardly” and “disgraceful,” attributing the breach to a mix-up with his architect and builder while he was focused on adopting three children. The committee ultimately granted permission by nine votes to one.
Stockport Council and Councillor Weldon were approached for comment.
