1st September 2026
Internal correspondence from Stockport Council shows that questions raised by local campaigner Sheila Oliver about the controversial North Reddish primary school and children’s centre project were twice ruled “vexatious” and excluded from public meetings or left unanswered.
The project, built on the former Harcourt Street playing field — a site with a history as a clay pit and industrial tip — was already the subject of public concern over contamination, cost growth and delays. Early internal notes from 2005 recorded incomplete cost estimates that omitted external works, a substantial increase in floor area, and a budget fixed at £5,736,649 before full ground investigations were complete. Later testing confirmed elevated levels of lead, arsenic and asbestos. Public reports eventually put the projected cost at £8.6 million amid lengthy delays and remediation work.
Against that background, three documents illustrate how the council handled scrutiny.
A letter dated 22 August 2011, signed on behalf of the Democratic Services Manager, acknowledged questions submitted for the Executive meeting of 8 August 2011. A reply was provided on a separate car-lease matter. On the Harcourt Street question, however, the Council Solicitor had advised that it was vexatious “and therefore no response has been provided.”
Fifteen months later, on 7 December 2012, Oliver emailed Democratic Services (copying the council leader) with two questions for the Executive meeting of 17 December. She asked to see all background papers on the “toxic waste dump primary school at North Reddish” going back five years, noting that refusal to disclose could constitute a criminal offence. She also attached a BAM Construction contract that, she said, required a football pitch as part of the works and asked why none existed. She indicated she had circulated the issues more widely and would report any continued refusal.
A reply dated 20 December 2012 stated that the Leader of the Council had agreed the two questions related to matters previously deemed vexatious. Neither was put to the meeting.
The pattern is clear: by 2011–2012 the council had decided that questions about the North Reddish scheme fell into the “vexatious” category and would not be answered through the public-question process at all.
Whether that classification was justified remains open to debate. The underlying subjects — access to historical papers on a publicly funded project involving contamination and major cost escalation, and delivery of a specific contractual obligation — were matters of legitimate public interest. Persistence in pressing those points does not automatically render the questions vexatious, particularly where new or unresolved issues (such as the missing pitch) were being raised. Councils possess formal powers to exclude repetitive or burdensome requests, yet applying that power to shut down scrutiny of a high-profile capital scheme with a documented history of problems invites questions about transparency and accountability.
What this does show is a local authority that chose to close the formal channels of public questioning on a project that had already generated significant local controversy.
