PARENTS are slamming the council’s proposed changes to a Sale’s school catchment area.

Residents are calling upon Trafford Council to reconsider plans to extend Brooklands Primary School catchment area and to allow more time for their concerns to be registered.

Oversubscription in the Sale area continues to be an issue for families living in the area and, in order to ensure sufficient places, the local authority has undertaken a programme of school expansions across the whole of Sale.

As part of these plans, the council is proposing to create a joint catchment area corridor between the current Brooklands catchment area and the current Springfield catchment area, where all children resident in that corridor will have catchment area priority at both schools.

According to council documents, 341 properties currently in the Springfield catchment area would be included the proposed joint Brooklands/Springfield catchment area.

Opponents claim that newly-added properties located closer to the school itself will be prioritised and place families living within the existing catchment area at a disadvantage.

Questions were also raised about the method by which the council determined the precise distance of residents’ homes from borough schools.

Residents voiced their concerns at a meeting with ward councillors Pamela Dixon and Chris Boyes at Sale High School on December 22.

“It’s deeply concerning to hear that many local residents have remained unaware of these proposals for much of the consultation and its negative implications on their children,” said Stephen Finch, who attended the meeting.

“There’s certainly a need to reconsider these plans, and cutting back the size of the proposed extension to the catchment area seems to be an obvious route to explore.”

Steve Bridgeman’s child failed to secure a place at the school despite living 0.65 miles away.

He said: “These proposals are fundamentally flawed, relying upon unsourced data about future demand for places which isn’t readily available to the general public, who have no insight into the calculation methodologies being employed.

“The council is failing also to recognise the potential impact on the fabric of communities, with children of neighbouring families likely to be split up when it comes to schooling. Officers are dealing with issues affecting people’s lives with an approach based on soulless number crunching. That just isn’t right.”

Trafford Council confirmed that there is currently a formal consultation taking place regarding proposals to increase admission numbers at Brooklands Primary School.

The consultation closes on December 31 2015, and following this date, the comments submitted during the consultation will be considered, alongside all other relevant information, which will determine a final decision to be made on the proposal.