I should like to say a big 'thank you' to everyone who turned up in force on Saturday to say that the protected playing pitches on the Leeds Girls' High School site should be retained for the community when Leeds Girls' High School moves to Alwoodley in July.
Two packed public meetings and now Saturday's workshops have confirmed that the community sees protection of these pitches as being of paramount importance for the area. Ten years ago, local people made the mistake of not objecting when Leeds Univers
ity claimed that there was community support for the former Grammar School's protected playing pitch being converted to a rose garden. Next thing they knew, the pitch lost its protected status and was built on. The community is determined that the Leeds Girls' High School pitches will not lose their protected status in the same way.
The former Grammar School's and Girls High School's playing fields were designated protected playing pitches in the Leeds Unitary Development Plan because the surrounding area has almost no pitches (reflected in the nil yearly expenditure for pitch maintenance in Hyde Park and Woodhouse Ward and extremely low pitch maintenance in the Headingley Ward); only Harehills has fewer pitches. That's why 1,200 people, including local MP Greg Mulholland, have signed a petition asking Leeds City Council to buy the protected playing pitches for local primary schools and the community. And it's why the head teachers of local four primary schools have written to the council asking for the same thing.
People in this area are showing that they care more about the Leeds Girls High School site and in particular its Protected Playing Pitches than any other local issue there has been in the past 20 years (an indeed probably since the school was built in 1906).
Generations of primary school children and families, now and in the future will thank them
Janet A Bailey, Ash Grove, Leeds
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