Is this listed school safe?

Published: 29 October, 2010

• I NOTE from your article (Go-ahead for £13m primary, October 22) that the rebuilding of Ashmount School on metropolitan open land has been approved – despite all the cutbacks we are told are being inflicted on us. 

It is painful to see the old canards dragged out yet again – that this is necessary because “staff and children have to walk through adjoining classrooms to reach the stairs. The only toilets are on the ground floor”. In so far as this is true it is only so because of alterations that the school itself has carried out, and which could as easily be reversed.

I hope the new council will stick to the previous council’s undertaking to respect the locally listed status of the excellent existing building, a status conferred by the council itself.

JAMES DUNNETT
James Dunnett Architects
Barnsbury Road, N1