Special School Fire Another Warning for Leeds City Council

4.10.25pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 2nd May 2004

Last night's fire at Victoria Park Special School in Bramley was yet another incident to hit Leeds Schools. Local Councillor Linda Sullivan (Lib Dem, Bramley) arrived at the school while the Fire was at its height and saw the efforts of the firefighters to save the school at first hand.

She said " Well done to the Fire Brigade for containing this fire and managing to save the gym and part of the main school and the external classrooms. There were around 75 firefighters at the scene, around 20 fire appliances and at least a dozen stations were involved. Although parts of the school were saved they have been very badly damaged by the fire. It's a sad loss for young people with special needs with the loss of work and projects by the fire.

"I dread what would happen if such an incident happened during the day, at any school let alone a school for special needs."

Councillor Mark Harris, Leader of the Opposition Liberal Democrat Group on Leeds City Council, said "Liberal Democrats have been calling for the installation of sprinkler systems in all new school buildings, as the Fire Service has been recommending. The lack of sprinkler systems leads to much greater damage as school fires are often already out of control by the time the Fire Service arrives at the incidents. When a school is burnt down its not just the cost of replacing the buildings, it's a massive job to repair the damage caused by the loss of work, and disruption to the pupils. Leeds needs to get on with the massive job of installing sprinkler systems as quickly as possible - its no longer a matter of the occasional fire, only the other week there was a fire at Miles Hill Primary School, and earlier in the year there was a second major fire at Brigshaw High School."

Note

Victoria Park - is a school for pupils with moderate learning difficulties aged 11 to 19 years old. There were 124 pupils at the school.

Education Leeds have proposed the development of a Specialist Inclusive Learning Centre (SILC) in the West Wedge of Leeds. The other special school in the West is Milestone. Milestone caters for pupils with profound learning difficulties and associated care needs aged from two to 19 years old. The capacity in this school is 120 and there is at present 62 pupils at this school.