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Hyde Park: Judge salutes the school 'evictees'
A judge has praised a community's efforts to save a long-empty school from going to rot – despite having to evict a group of people who have recently taken over the building.
Royal Park Primary School in Hyde Park was closed down in 2004 and residents have long claimed they were promised by Leeds City Council the building would be retained for community use.
In the past fortnight, members of the the Royal Park Consortium – a community group set up to protect and reclaim the building – have moved in claiming the council, its legal owner, is allowing it to fall into total disrepair.
They say they have spent more than 16,000 repairing the roof, painting, cleaning up and making the building safe.
Despite their efforts, Leeds City Council yesterday won a possession order to throw the group off the main school building
Bailiffs were set to descend on the site this morning.
A second hearing regarding the caretaker's house, also on the site, will be held next week.
Despite the granting of the possession order at Leeds County Court, there was praise for the community – and strong words of advice for the council – from Judge Simon Grenfell.
"(The community] have tried – and very commendably no doubt – to prevent it from falling into further disrepair," Judge Grenfell told the packed hearing room.
"They have tried to negotiate with Leeds City Council to get some proper basis for community use.
"But unfortunately...Whatever their good motives may be, they are in fact trespassers.
"They have come onto the property to try and protect it. That is entirely commendable but it does not create a right to be on the property.
"An owner of a property – however it has fallen into disrepair – is entitled to possession of it. It is up to the council to prevent the building being a danger. The community itself is not a legal entity."
The judge added in conclusion he "would not wish to deflate the very commendable efforts in the community to try and see this building is put to the proper use.
"My only hope is that Leeds City Council, in exercising its right to possession of the building, will ensure that the building will not become a danger to the people who go into it," he said.
Protesters sat on the floor and scores more gathered outside the court building to hear the judgement.
The hearing was originally scheduled to last just 10 minutes but took almost two hours as both Leeds City Council and the Royal Park Consortium presented their cases.
After the hearing, protesters vowed to fight on. They are now consulting lawyers ahead of next week's second hearing.
Meanwhile letters in support of the campaigning squatters have also flooded into the Yorkshire Evening Post.
One backer wrote: "Although it might not be orthodox, I am overjoyed to at last see people using the space for what it's meant for rather than rotting away".
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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