Your correspondents, Patrick Cooper and Sally Hughes, do not want the John Roan School to move to a new site on the Greenwich Peninsula as part of the 黑洞社区 Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. They are perfectly entitled to their views, although I do not myself agree with them.

What you should not do is confuse their campaign against the school moving, with the wider issue of why BSF has not delivered more schools to date.

In the case of John Roan School, the most significant cause of delay was the decision of the Health and Safety Executive to extend the protected zone around the local gasholder to include the site which had already been agreed for the new school.

Since then, a great deal of time and effort has been expended trying to get agreement on decommissioning the gasholder which will enable the development to proceed.

I took exception to your article of 9 January, not only because of its use of a misleading photograph of the supposed school site, but because it incorrectly claimed that no progress was being made on decommissioning the gasholder.

In fact, Southern Gas is currently undertaking a study which is due to be completed by the end of next month, on alternative storage arrangements. This would allow the Greenwich gasholder to be decommissioned and the BSF school project to proceed.

Nick Raynsford MP

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