Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the letter from her Department to the Harperbury Free School governors of 17 November 2015, if she will make an assessment of the implications for housing and other planned developments in the catchment area of the proposed Harperbury Free School of the risk referred to in that letter that no suitable site can ever be found for that school.

Assessing the implications for housing and other developments is a matter for the Council rather than the Department.

In order for planning permission to be granted for a site in the Green Belt, as is the case for the trust’s preferred site, the Local Planning Authority would have to accept that there is a strong need for a school in the locality of the identified site, which they do not.