This January an Islington Community School, Ashmount, vacated its old building and site near Hornsey lane, London N19 and moved to a magnificent new building on a lovely site in Crouch Hill Park N8 a short distance done the road in January of this year. The future of the school has been secured.
Islington expected to raise at least some of the cost of the new building for Ashmount by selling the old site, at a discounted price to a housing association. They thought they would get about 3 million, but if sold on the open market, the site large, and in between Highgate and Crouch End would have raised ten million. The Council were in effect making a political decision to sacrifice money for social housing. Housing which they had promised to build in their election manifesto on which they had successfully defeated the outgoing Liberal democrat administration.
Last week it was learnt that the Education Funding Agency has chosen to requisition the old Ashmount Site from Islington Council, which they have the power to do, without paying any compensation to the Council.
The site is to be transferred without charge to private ownership; the site will be given to Bellevue Education Limited for a Free School. Bellevue Education Ltd is a commercial (for profit) company, which runs a chain of nine for profit fee paying schools here, and in Switzerland. Bellevue made profits last year of £1.5m on a turnover of £3.7m, so it?s what I believe one would call ?a nice little business?. Although if you want to rush out and buy some shares you cannot at the moment as they are not publically listed. Instead the investors are venture capitalists based in Switzerland using Russian money. Perhaps there will be a flotation at some point in the future. I am sure we will be all poised to add a bit of diversity to our share portfolios.
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What do you think of the plan for a new free School in Islington?
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nlondondad · 30/06/2013 22:26
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