SIR, Each group involved in the decision to close/not to close Lowick CE School was hampered by having an interest of one kind or another: the LEA councillors had their political imperative to gratify (but why did the active proponent of closure, the Cabinet Member for Education, have a vote at all?); the CE Diocesan group had the embarrassment of actually owning the property; the Catholic Diocesan group was compromised by not being affected by the issue and yet expected to vote to justify its presence; the Schools Group had some members who were employees of the LEA. Where was the true independence?

It would seem that it rested with Coun Edgar who, as a last minute replacement, came to the meeting with no preconceptions, listened to the range of responses and came to the conclusion that it would be a good thing not to close Lowick School and voted accordingly. The leader of the council (not present) spoke to him on the telephone to "put him in the picture"; that is, to change in a few minutes the mind that had listened for two hours to the arguments.

Bewildered that the Schools Organisation Committee (SOC) could get away with this fiasco of a decision, taken so irresponsibly generations of children have reaped great benefits from the education offered by this school which is now to be hustled off the scene I have asked around and, in vain, who dreamed up this farcical procedure? Was it based on a model handed down from Whitehall (courtesy of Brian Rix)?

The surprising fact is that Cumbria County Council knows very well how to set up truly independent bodies of decision-makers appropriate to serious, often highly charged, situations; they achieve this in the Schools Appeals Panels here, as required by law, they are scrupulous in selecting members of the public who are capable of sound, impartial judgements. The council must know how inferior and open to corruption the SOC structure is, in this regard.

I appreciate the point you made in your Comment, that the opportunity to develop the school as a base from which to expand regenerative change sadly has now been dismissed. Here was a chance for the LEA to show that it sees its role as an enabler' of change. Did neither the Cabinet Member for Education or her officer director (an official not mentioned at all in your report) not know that the county council has sponsored the setting up of the Rural Action Zone in which education is to be linked with employment, rural industry and farming and the community services. The Lowick School campaigners obviously did know and no doubt looked forward to the development, but then, they clearly have vision.

Visionaries are not much liked by autocratic forces and I suspect that autocratic attitudes permeate the upper echelons in County Hall, a state of affairs quite unsuited to the time and place we live in. Officers and councillors are not our masters but servants of the populace, the council tax payers make their handsome salaries, pension conditions and allowances possible. People will not, however, tolerate indefinitely shabby treatment meted out to right-minded citizens who work unrewarded in the interests of the community and its future.

The thought of a much-loved local landmark being sold off is distressing, and no less so for local families whose forebears built in 1856 the school and its teacher's house from public subscription. They know that the people of Ulpha have gone down this path before them when the Diocesan Education Authority sold their school in 2002. I believe that there are in existence very different interpretations of these events from the account given by the Diocesan Director.

B. Millsom

Ulverston

February 7, 2003 15:30