Sheila Oliver
Evidence compiled to date — further material held by the author
Introduction
Aquinas College sits on Nangreave Road, Stockport, on a site that, until the mid-2000s, was recognisably a school among terraced streets — the kind of place where an “Elderly people crossing” sign and a row of Victorian brick houses tell you more about the neighbourhood’s character than any planning document does. In 2006 and 2007 that changed. A scheme went forward to demolish the existing buildings and put up, in their place, a long, several-storey “New College” running the length of Nangreave Road.
Other Books by this Author
The “Vexatious? Moi?” series:
Book 1: Harcourt Street and Vale View Primary School
Book 2: Padden Brook
Book 3: The Bent Bypass (the A555/SEMMMS Manchester Airport Relief Road)
Book 4: Sandringham Road
Book 5: Offerton Precinct
Book 6: Marple Money (the Marple Active Communities Hub)
Book 7: The Wall of Silence — How Stockport Council Blocks the Questions It Doesn’t Want to Answer
Book 8: The Foggbrook Files
Book 9: Arms Length — The Story of Stockport’s Own Companies
Book 10: For Hire — The Consultants Councils Can’t Refuse
Book 11: The Price of Civic Duty — How Stockport Council Spent While It Cut
Book 12: Paying The Piper: Stockport’s MPs And The Price Of Public Money
Book 13: Lessons In Privacy. How Stockport Grammar School Learned To Ask For Forgiveness Rather Than Permission
And, outside the series:
Learning Law From a Lawless Council (Stockport) — the Michael Parnell case
Chapter One: A Protected Playing Field
Before a single brick was proposed to move, Sport England had already told the college that its playing field was not simply spare land to be built on. In a pre-application response dated 21 November 2006, Sport England’s Regional Planning Manager wrote that the site appeared to be a playing field as defined in the 1996 Statutory Instrument No. 1817, and set out the national playing fields policy in the plainest terms:
“Sport England will oppose the granting of planning permission for any development which would lead to the loss of, or would prejudice the use of, all or any part of a playing field… unless, in the judgement of Sport England, one of the specific circumstances applies.”
The one let-out the college might be able to use — exception E4 — required any lost playing field to be replaced with one of equivalent or better quality and quantity, in a suitable location, before development began. Sport England was clear that this was not yet demonstrated: it asked for the total planned pupil numbers, the full range of sports to be provided, how pitch users displaced by a Sunday School already using the site would be accommodated, whether the new facilities would meet BB98 and Sport England’s own design standards, and whether formal community access would be secured through a Community Access Agreement.
None of these are minor technicalities. They are the standard tests any scheme proposing to build over a protected playing field has to pass — and, on the face of this letter, Aquinas College had not yet passed them at the point it went to planners for advice.
Chapter Two: A New College Twice the Size
The BroadwayMalyan planning-stage elevation drawings, dated June 2007 (job number 24999), show what “New College” meant in practice: a long, continuous, several-storey block running the full length of the Nangreave Road frontage, combining a multi-purpose hall with general teaching areas behind an aluminium and render facade. The location plan shows it set against a row of existing terraced houses immediately alongside the boundary line — the scale difference between the two is stark even in a flat elevation drawing.
A “3D Renders in Context” image taken from street level on Nangreave Road shows the site as it was before the redevelopment: mature trees, a low roofline, and an “Elderly people” warning sign at the pedestrian crossing — a reminder that this stretch of road already had a settled, vulnerable population of residents and pedestrians the scheme would need to be built around, not simply over.
Further photographs of the surrounding streets are expected to show what, if anything, was actually protected once building started.
Chapter Three: Cash for Silence?
Perhaps the most striking document in the file so far is not from the council or the college at all, but from residents themselves. An unsigned, undated leaflet headed simply “COMPENSATION” was circulated locally, inviting residents to post a completed slip through the door of a house on Soudan Road:
“It is possible that local residents can claim compensation for loss of property value and disturbance due to noise, loss of light, loss of local open space etc due to the establishment of the new Aquinas College… We have been told we are better served all working together with regards to making claims.”
The tear-off slip asks residents to register an interest in claiming under Part I of the Land Compensation Act 1973 — the statutory route for compensation where the use of public works depreciates the value of a nearby property through physical factors such as noise, vibration, smell, fumes or artificial lighting.
Whoever organised this clearly believed the development’s impact on the surrounding streets would be serious enough, and lasting enough, to justify a collective compensation claim before the building had even opened. That, on its own, tells its own story about how residents expected to be affected — and it raises the obvious question this book will keep coming back to: who told them to expect this, and why weren’t the same reassurances given as freely to the people living opposite as they were, on paper, to Sport England and the planning committee?
Chapter Four: Three Floors, or Four?
By 2010 the redevelopment was built, and Sheila Oliver had a more technical question for the council: how many floors had actually been approved? The planning submission’s written description referred to the roof as a “floor” in places, while the approved plans showed three storeys plus a roof level. On top of that, a lift winding room had appeared well above the parapet line — not obviously accounted for on the elevation drawings the council said it had approved.
She put the point to a full council meeting in a public question she was unable to attend to deliver in person:
“Aquinas appear to have been granted planning permission without the Council referencing the applicant’s controlled drawings. Whatever is said of the air conditioning units can also apply to the lift winding room, which is well above the parapet, especially now it is apparent that an elevation drawing was not formally accepted as part of the submission. What does the Council intend to do about the lift winding room? Also, having called the roof a floor, and the submission relies on a written description, has the Council given permission for three floors and a roof or four floors?”
The written reply came from Cllr Kevin Hogg, Executive Councillor for Regeneration — a name that recurs in this series, since he is the same councillor who would later reassure Woodsmoor residents that Stockport Grammar’s floodlights wouldn’t “look like Blackpool Tower” (see Book 12). His answer to Mrs Oliver was, in its own way, just as revealing:
“The air conditioning units are being dealt with by a two stage process. In the first instance the College applies for a ‘non material’ amendment requesting the imposition of a condition on the permission listing the stamped approved drawing numbers and secondly, when that application is approved, it applies for a ‘minor material amendment’ to secure the retention of the air handling units. Currently, neither of these applications have been received.” — Cllr Kevin Hogg, 18 February 2010
Read plainly, this says the college had already built rooftop plant — air handling units and, by the letter’s own logic, the lift winding room — that was not properly tied to an approved, referenced drawing, and that the fix was to apply retrospectively for the paperwork to catch up with what was already standing. The straightforward question of whether permission covered three floors and a roof, or four floors, went unanswered: Cllr Hogg wrote that he was “unclear what is being asked in the final question.”
The BroadwayMalyan “Proposed Elevations South” drawing, annotated by hand with the storey heights, sets out exactly the numbers the question turned on: a ground floor at +79.750, first floor at +83.500, second floor at +87.250, and a top of parapet at +92.150 — with the lift winding room additional to all of them. Whether that arrangement was ever formally and unambiguously approved, on a drawing the council could point to, remains the open question this chapter leaves on the table.
BroadwayMalyan Proposed South Elevation and Wing 1/2 South Elevations, with hand-annotated storey heights, 2007.
Chapter Five: The Business Case, and the Officer’s Report
The Planning and Highways Regulation Committee’s plans list for 13 March 2008 fills in the official framework around the scheme. The application, DC028122, was received on 16 October 2007, with Aquinas College as applicant and Mr R Gee of Gee Squared Ltd, Liverpool, acting as agent. The case officer was Mrs J Chase. The application was called up to full Area Committee by Cllr Derbyshire, rather than being settled by delegated officer decision.
The officer’s report describes a main campus building three storeys high to Nangreave Road, with three projecting rear wings — the outer two at two storeys, the inner one at three — clad in white render and anodised aluminium above, with facing brickwork on the wings. During the application the building was moved further from Diamond Street after objection, ending up 21 metres from the side elevations of the Diamond Street properties (18 metres from 12 Nangreave Road at the closest overhanging corner), with the three rear wings sited 57, 45 and 22 metres respectively from the houses on Soudan Road — the same road named on the compensation leaflet in Chapter Three.
What justified building on this scale is set out in the college’s own January 2005 business case, prepared by AA Projects Ltd. It lists 21 separate facilities across the estate — several of them, including the Masonic Hall and St Bernadette’s, owned by the Diocese of Shrewsbury and maintained by its estates department — and rates the great majority “unsatisfactory” or, in four cases, flatly “unacceptable” for delivering the curriculum. Only the Sports Hall, West Wing and Tennis Courts, all built in 2000 or 2002, were rated satisfactory. The estimated cost of maintaining the existing estate over ten years came to £11,935,180.
The table below reproduces the estate condition summary in full:
| Facility | Built | Floor area | Suitability | Est. 10-yr maintenance |
| Main Building | 1955 | 3,290 m² | Unsatisfactory | £4,443,400 |
| Annexe | 1972 | 445 m² | Unsatisfactory | £348,180 |
| Rear mobile | 1989 | 124 m² | Unacceptable | £4,000 |
| MFL mobile | 1994 | 252 m² | Unacceptable | £10,000 |
| Steel storage units (x3) | n/a | 48 m² | Unsatisfactory | £2,000 |
| LRC | 1994 | 507 m² | Unsatisfactory | £201,450 |
| East Wing | 1998 | 1,488 m² | Unsatisfactory | £1,084,350 |
| Sports Hall | 2000 | 1,544 m² | Satisfactory | £330,000 |
| Rec. Studio mobile | 2002 | 22 m² | Unacceptable | £4,000 |
| West Wing | 2002 | 743 m² | Satisfactory | £30,000 |
| Open Space | n/a | n/a | Unsatisfactory | £15,000 |
| Sunday School | 1972 | 751 m² | Unsatisfactory | £350,000 |
| S.S. Annexe | 1972 | 50 m² | Unsatisfactory | incl. above |
| S.S. Music House | 1930s | 100 m² | Unsatisfactory | incl. above |
| S.S. Sports Field | n/a | n/a | Unsatisfactory | £15,000 |
| Masonic Hall | pre-1900 | 40 m² | Unsatisfactory | £30,000 |
| St Thomas’ Field | n/a | n/a | Unsatisfactory | £15,000 |
| Grounds/general site issues | n/a | n/a | Unsatisfactory | £4,965,800 |
| St Bernadette’s | pre-1900 | 70 m² | Unsatisfactory | £30,000 |
| Tennis Courts | 2000 | n/a | Satisfactory | £57,000 |
| Ethics Office | 2004 | 18 m² | Unsatisfactory | — |
| Total | £11,935,180 |
There is a real case in that table — a scattered, largely worn-out estate, much of it inherited from a Sunday School and a Masonic Hall rather than built for teaching. That is precisely why the surrounding chapters matter: a genuine case for investment is not the same thing as a licence to build without reference to the neighbours, to leave a playing-field exception unresolved, or to regularise unapproved rooftop plant after the fact. The business case explains why the college wanted to build. It does not explain why so much of the process around how it built seems to have run ahead of the paperwork meant to control it.
The completed redevelopment seen from the surrounding streets, red cladding visible above the boundary fence.
Chapter Six: Fourteen Options and One Playing Field
The design and access statement submitted with application 028122 explains how the site was chosen. It records that the college considered many options over a number of years, that four different architectural practices had proposed solutions, and that the scheme finally put forward was the fourteenth option (“Option 14”, dated August 2007). Earlier layouts by Bond Bryant, Ellis Williams and DLA are reproduced in the statement.
The options were grouped into four categories:
- Relocating elsewhere in the town — rejected: no suitable site of similar area and transport position; Hallam Mill was the closest possibility but too complex to acquire.
- Refurbishing and extending the existing buildings — rejected: the 1950s main building was described as no longer fit for purpose, there was “no space to build the 50% increase of space required,” and day-to-day operations would be seriously disrupted.
- Building entirely on the Sunday School site — rejected: the college did not own the land, it would require relocating the Sunday School through a land swap, and the Sunday School regarded its Nangreave Road frontage as vital.
- Building entirely on the college’s own playing fields — preferred: work could be completed without major disturbance to the college, it fitted the government’s policy of rebuilding successful colleges, and it moved the college closer to the A6 and public transport.
In other words, the scheme that went forward was the one built on the playing field — the land Sport England had already flagged in November 2006 as protected, and which its policy would oppose losing unless a specific exception applied. The design and access statement does commit to that exception’s terms in principle: it promises to “re-provide the same quantity of green space at a better quality” and to re-provide the two potential sports facilities “with better quality pitches and surfaces,” and its green-space plan marks a “new sport ground” to the east of the site.
Sport England’s exception E4, however, required replacement provision to be in place “prior to commencement of development.” Whether the replacement ground was actually available, and to the required standard, before building began is a question the papers supplied so far do not answer — and it is exactly the sort of question a planning condition or legal agreement should have pinned down.
Two other statements in the design and access statement are worth setting beside the figures elsewhere in this book. The statement says the design aims to “retain long views into the site for existing residents as best as possible,” and to “mass up from two to three storeys” from Soudan Road to Nangreave Road. It also acknowledges that the new building moves the majority of the college’s accommodation closer to the A6, “presenting both opportunities and constraints” in a “more prominent position.”
Design and access statement, page 17: previous scheme option 3 (DLA) and the “Preferred Option” (Option 14).
Chapter Seven: What Was Drawn, What Was Built
A set of photographs taken while the building was under construction shows the completed shell rising directly behind the site hoarding on Soudan Road (the street sign is visible on the hoarding in one frame). Red brick and white panel elevations stand close against the older terraced houses; scaffolding is still up around the upper levels; and grey rooftop plant units are visible at roof level. A further frame, taken over a neighbouring chimney stack, gives an immediate sense of the new block’s height against the surrounding Victorian roofline.
The cover image of the design and access statement, by contrast, shows a stone-coloured corner block with large windows and a red-brick wing beyond. Renders are illustrative, and the materials that count are those on the stamped approved drawings held on the planning file. But the visual difference between the image used to present the scheme and the building photographed on site is worth putting on record, alongside the rooftop plant and lift winding room discussed in Chapter Four.
During construction: the new building beside existing houses on Soudan Road, with hoarding, scaffolding and tower-crane silo visible.
During construction: the new block and rooftop plant seen over a neighbouring chimney stack.
During construction: rooftop plant units, scaffolding and red-brick elevations.
Cover of the design and access statement, application 028122.
Chapter Eight: The Numbers That Do Not Obviously Add Up
Several figures in the paperwork sit awkwardly together, and are set out here as questions rather than conclusions. The application form gives a total floorspace of 5,853 square metres and shows no new staff, against 177 existing. The design and access statement says the redevelopment was needed to provide a 50% increase in space. And the college’s own 2005 business case lists individual floor areas that, if every listed building is counted, add up to roughly 9,490 square metres across the estate (including the Sunday School buildings, which the college did not own).
It may be that these figures measure different things — footprint, gross internal area, teaching space only — but the documents supplied do not say so. A reader trying to understand how much larger the new college is than the one it replaced cannot tell from these papers alone, and that is itself a finding: the single most basic question about a redevelopment’s scale should not need reconciling by a member of the public.
Conclusion and Open Questions
What is on the record is a protected playing field chosen as the building site, a scheme on a scale that dwarfs the terraced streets around it, a resident-led compensation campaign organised before the building was finished, and rooftop plant and a lift winding room that the council’s own reply says were being tied back to the approved drawings after the event. Against that stands a genuine, documented case for investment in a worn-out estate. The evidence compiled here is a selection; further material is held by the author and can be added.
The record leaves these questions open:
- Was replacement playing-field provision in place before development began, as exception E4 required?
- Did the permission cover three floors and a roof, or four floors, and was the lift winding room shown on a formally approved elevation?
- Were the rooftop air handling units and lift room covered by the stamped approved drawings when built, and what became of the two-stage amendment process described in February 2010?
- Which floorspace figure is correct — 5,853 square metres, a 50% uplift on the existing estate, or something else?
- Do the materials as built match the materials on the approved drawings?
Documents and Images
“3D Renders in Context” — Nangreave Road before redevelopment, showing the Elderly People crossing sign.
BroadwayMalyan proposed North and South elevations for Aquinas College’s “New College,” June 2007 (job 24999).
The residential street near the site, showing the existing terraced housing.
Design and access statement, page 26: open green space in the wider and near context, with the “new sport ground” marked.
Context elevation from the application drawings: the proposed building beside existing housing.
Context elevation from the application drawings, showing the site boundary line and adjoining terraced houses.
BroadwayMalyan Sections AA, BB and CC through the Aquinas College redevelopment, Stage E, 2007.
