The winners of The Greatest Christmas Awards 2012 will be announced on Sunday 13th January. After meeting over 200 garden centre christmas teams the judges chose their winners from the following list of finalists...
Tickets are selling fast for this years Greatest Christmas Awards Presentations and Party Night at the Majestic Hotel Harrogate on Sunday 13th January. Secure your tickets for The Greatest industry Christmas Party of the year by buying on-line now...
A Jewish school will move to a new site after winning a legal battle over its future. The Etz Chaim free school is to open at a former Wyvale garden centre in Mill Hill following a High Court judgment.
Barnet council granted planning permission for the move last year, but campaigners went to the High Court in an attempt to stop it.
They claimed the council failed to consider the needs of the disabled and elderly people who used the garden centre. But Mr Justice Lindblom dismissed the claims, saying the argument against the school’s new premises was “misconceived”.
Barnet councillor Andrew Harper said: “I’m relieved that we can now concentrate our efforts on supporting a local school in providing the best possible education to its students.”
Etz Chaim opened in Barnet on a temporary site in 2011. Last March planning permission was granted for it to move into the former Wyevale Garden Centre in Daws Lane.
It was one of the first free schools in the country to open, and has 76 pupils aged between three and six. But Daniel Coleman, one of the disabled people who used the garden centre, sought a judicial review of the decision to grant planning permission, under the Equalities Act 2010.
He and other campaigners wanted the garden centre, which had shut, to continue to be used as a community hub and took the case to court. But in his judgment, Mr Justice Lindblom said that neither the school nor the local authority had done anything improper.
Adam Dawson, chairman of governors at Etz Chaim, said: “Far more exciting than the ill-conceived litigation is that we have received 130 applications for our 26-place 2013 nursery class.”
Mr Coleman, who has the rare genetic disorder, said: “We will no longer have a sheltered place to while away the lonely hours or a place that can accommodate those in wheelchairs.”
