CAMPAIGNERS fighting to preserve a school field have challenged the validity of a “flawed” consultation about its sale, and insist any future outcome should benefit the community.

King Edward VI Community College is selling half the school site in a bid to raise £7 million to fund urgent improvements to classrooms and sports facilities, and build a new sixth form block.

Totnes Town Council has bid £2.5 million for the Lower Field – a four-acre green lung which provides access to the River Dart, which the council says it will protect and enhance for the community – plus the nearby historic Elmhirst buildings.

The council has raised fears a housing development on the site could increase pollution on the A385 Ashburton Road, already marked an Air Quality Management Area.

Ninety-nine people responded to KEVICC’s public consultation about the sale of its land. The majority, 75 per cent, agreed with its aims and the benefits of consolidating the school’s operations on one site.

Why This Field? (WTF?) campaigners claim KEVICC’s survey was worded in a way that did not allow respondents to support improvements to buildings and facilities without also supporting the land sale.

This, combined with less than 100 responses, devalues the consultation, they claim.

The campaign group carried out its own survey, which received responses from 588 people. The majority, 91 per cent, supported the town council’s bid for the Lower Field site.

In a report, the group said: “These contexts and flaws mean the KEVICC consultation has very little value with respect to community opinion about the sale of the upper Lower Field and Elmhirst Building.”

Birmingham University research fellow, Dr Kevin Burchell, who carried out the WTF? consultation, said it showed ‘overwhelming support’ for the field to be developed by the town council as a resource for community benefit.

He says the Articles of Association of the Dart Valley Learning Trust (DVLT), responsible for the school’s land and assets, state that an objective of the trust is to “benefit the community.”

“The findings and analysis in our consultation report strongly indicate that KEVICC governors and DVLT trustees have a moral and apparently, based on the DVLT articles, a legal obligation to seek a win-win solution in which the school is able to develop its estate and community benefit is realised.

“In addition, the report shows that WTF? has a strong mandate to speak on behalf of the town in this matter.

“The WTF? group stands ready to work with KEVICC governors and DVLT trustees. “Finally, the report suggests KEVICC should be more open about the limitations of its consultation in general and with respect to this issue.”

Dr Burchell added: “KEVICC governors and DVLT trustees have the unique opportunity to make a historically significant contribution to the future of Totnes.

“We urge them to do their utmost to do something wonderful for Totnes, we urge them to so something amazing that will be remembered and commemorated for posterity.”

The school and governors were contacted for comment.