HC Deb 28 February 1963 vol 672 cc1424-5
4. Mr. Iremonger

asked the Minister of Education if he will make a statement on the future of the Benton Road, School, Ilford.

Sir E. Boyle

This is at present a school for handicapped pupils. Those pupils will move to a new school later in the year and I understand that the Roman Catholic authorities hope to buy the Benton Road site from the local education authority and establish a primary school there. No formal proposal for the establishment of the primary school has yet been put to me.

Mr. Iremonger

While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that the Essex County Council is asking the Roman Catholic community to pay a price for this school at residential use price instead of at educational price and that this will cost the community an extra £18,000? As the Essex County Council can ask the Minister of Housing and Local Government for consent to sell at a lower price, is not this a monstrous imposition on a community which already has to pay for services which the rest of the community receives free? Cannot the right hon. Gentleman do something about it?

Sir E. Boyle

The local education authority is fully within its rights in asking for residential use value as the price of the property, acting in accordance with Section 26 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959. It is open to the local education authority to ask my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government for his consent to sell at less than the best price, but I have no power to require it, nor would it be right for me to require it to do that, and it would be wholly non-consonant with the spirit of the 1959 Act, debates on which in the House I remember very well.

Mr. Iremonger

On a point of order. In view of the highly unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I intend to raise the matter on the Adjournment.