Aldi construction site in Dudley leaves school playground 'exposed'
The construction of a new Aldi store in the Black Country has left children playing and exercising at a primary school left in open view.
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Mike Westwood, chairman of governors at Red Hall Primary School in Zoar Street, Lower Gornal, said trees had been cut down from the front of the playground as work was carried out by digger drivers and contractors next to the inadequate fence on the school boundary for the new store.
It had created a 'massive safety issue,' he said.
Mr Westwood told a meeting of Dudley Council's North Dudley Community Forum that a new boundary fence was needed to safeguard and protect the pupils.
He urged that money for the fence be taken from hundreds of thousands of pounds paid by Aldi through the community infrastructure levy.
Mr Westwood said none of the Section 106 money, paid as a condition of planning permission, had been allocated for a fence.
The school had not been approached about any issues from the development.
The money was going instead to protect badgers and stop motorcycles going on to the neighbouring park.
Dudley MP Sonia Kumar said that it was a massive safeguarding problem and she hoped there would be a good outcome because it was unacceptable as it was.
Councillor Susan Ridney, the shadow cabinet member for children's services, said that it was important that a site meeting was held to look at the problem.
