Speak up now to help save Blagdon Hill School from closure

THE governors of Blagdon Hill Primary School continue to have my full support in their fight to save the village school from closure under Somerset County Council spending cuts.
I visited the school again yesterday with Mark Formosa, who is the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Taunton Deane and who is passionate about the need to maintain small schools.
We are urgently calling for everybody in the local community to send their comments to the county council before the public consultation process ends on Friday, June 6.
Interestingly, Mark discovered by coincidence that as a youngster he went to the same school in Cornwall as Blagdon’s chairman of governors, Jonathan Langdon.
The county council say they are talking about the quality of education in small rural schools - but we all know they are really interested in cutting money from a budget they have mismanaged despite doubling our Council Tax in 10 years.
Now, rural residents are being threatened with paying the price of the county’s blundering through the closure of village schools not just here on the Blackdowns, but across many areas of Somerset.
Blagdon Hill provides quality education for the children who attend it, and the small class sizes mean pupils can receive a high ratio of one-to-one attention from their teachers.
Pupils receive excellent sports tuition, every child goes swimming every week of every term, every child plays a musical instrument, there is a computer in class for every two pupils rather than a once-a-week session in an IT suite, and children with special needs are able to make huge progress in such an environment.
All this is reflected in Ofsted inspection reports which rate the school and its teaching environment as good, good, good.
Yet, the county council are contemplating closing Blagdon Hill School and they are already putting off potential pupils by not telling parents moving to the area that the school is there.
I was extremely impressed by the strength of local feelings which came out of the recent open meeting and drop-in sessions, which I think rather took the county council by surprise.
They were gravely mistaken if they thought Blagdon Hill residents would be a soft touch, and I hope that if enough people put sufficiently robust arguments to them before the close of consultation on Friday, then we may have a chance of stopping this closure.
It does not make sense to be closing any school at a time when schools in Taunton are already over-subscribed and we face thousands more homes being built in the town with a huge influx of new residents and their children.

• The photograph outside Blagdon Hill Primary School shows (left to right) acting head teacher David Hawkins, chairman of governors Jonathan Langdon, Mark Formosa, parent-governor Jayne Simpson, and Blackdown ward Deane Councillor John Thorne.

Red phone boxes under threat from cost-cutting BT

BT has just announced it wants to remove the last remaining red telephone boxes in many of the Blackdown Hills communities.
Four call boxes would be lost from the Blackdown ward which I represent on Taunton Deane Borough Council, and many more in the wider area around Wellington, where I am campaigning to become the county councillor next year.
As a businessman and a homeowner who gave BT the boot many months ago because of its appalling customer service and billing incompetence, I perhaps ought to declare an interest here.
That said, I am absolutely appalled that BT has suggested these phone boxes should be removed.
In nearly every case, it will leave whole communities without any access at all to a public telephone.
When I challenged BT, they were not even able to tell me how much use is made of these call boxes because they said they did not keep proper records.
They tell us they want to close them because they are losing money, but BT has a public service obligation and I am demanding they honour that obligation.
I do not just want to see this closure programme stopped, I want to see BT restoring many of the call boxes they have already removed.
I believe every community should have at least one public call box which people can use in the event of an emergency.
BT claim that most people have a mobile phone, but my phone does not have a signal in many parts of the Blackdowns, and if my car broke down, for example, I would have to find the nearest phone box to call the AA.
I have pointed out to our Deane council leader, Ross Henley, that we have the ability to make it very difficult for BT to close the phone boxes.
As a council, we can formally object and take BT through a pretty lengthy appeals process where every proposed phone box closure would be examined very carefully.
There is no question in my mind that we should do everything possible to resist these iniquitous phone box closures.
BT is presently consulting on the proposed closures and I shall be putting the case as strongly as possible against this move.

• The photographs show (TOP) me outside the phone box in Ford Street, just outside Wellington, which is on BT’s closure list, (MIDDLE) the under-threat phone box in Blagdon Hill, and (BOTTOM) the cobwebs which show the Stapley phone box has not been used in a very long time.