Councillors debate the Wanstead High School and pool petition at 7pm tonight. Officers recommend they simply note it, and the pool still has no agreed design.
A petition signed by 2,179 people reaches the floor of Redbridge’s Full Council at 7pm tonight. Officers recommend that councillors note it.
The petition is titled “Urgent demand for completion of Wanstead High School and Leisure Centre Building Works”. It asks the council to do two things:
- attend a public meeting “at the earliest possible opportunity” to give parents and the community feedback on the project
- prioritise “the urgent completion of this decade-long building work”
It passed the threshold in the council’s own Petitions Scheme, which is 1,500 signatures for a debate at Full Council. The officer report counts 2,179 signatories across the online e-petition and a paper petition combined. The online petition alone stood at 1,464 names this morning, and it does not close until 18 February 2027.
Nothing else in the borough is close. The council’s e-petitions page lists six other live petitions today. Their signatures add up to 137 between them.
The report is item 7a on tonight’s agenda, and it was published on Friday 18 September as a supplementary agenda. The meeting is in the Council Chamber at the Town Hall on Ilford High Road.
What the petition says
The wording is unusually direct for a document that ends up in a council agenda pack. It says the project “has been marred by a decade of delays and compounded by a lack of urgency to resolve this situation”.
It then sets out what six years of building work has done to the school day:
- lessons disrupted by noise and dust
- communal spaces in the school “massively reduced”
- one-way systems adding to pupils’ journeys around the site and reducing learning time
- staggered lunch breaks, which the petition says have hugely reduced extra-curricular provision
- disruption to public examinations
- “hundreds of hours” of senior leaders’ time absorbed by managing the building
It also says the cost of renting the temporary classrooms is “draining financial resources”, and that there is still “no contractor for the pool and leisure centre part of the project, and no timeline or end date”.
What the council’s answer adds
The report is written for the Director of Assurance and Monitoring Officer by Leontia Brewer, deputy committee services manager. Its recommendations are that Council notes the petition and notes the comments from the Executive Director of Children’s Services.
It does contain information the council has not published before. On the school building:
- the original main contractor “became insolvent in early 2026, leaving works on site incomplete and the school without a contractor in place to complete the scheme”
- the council ran a “structured recovery process”, including a gap analysis, enabling works and intrusive surveys
- the findings went to the council’s Executive Leadership Team, which confirmed a preferred delivery option
- that option was then approved through a Strong Leader Decision, a decision taken by the Leader rather than by Cabinet or a committee
- the council is “now progressing the necessary activities to implement the approved recovery approach, including the procurement and appointment of a contractor”
On the money, the report says a virement inside the existing capital programme has already been actioned to fund the next phase, and that it was set out in the Budgetary Control Report for Quarter 1 2026/27, which Cabinet considered on 17 September. No new borrowing has been sought, and none would be possible without a further Council vote.
That report is worth reading alongside tonight’s, because it puts figures on both halves of the project that the petition report does not. Its capital appendix shows the virement in full:
- £2m moved into Wanstead High School for 2026/27, and £6m for 2027/28. Both sums come out of the budget line for “Creation of Additional School Places”, which loses exactly the same amounts.
- The school project’s revised capital budget is now £3.585m this year and £6m next year, £9.585m in total, and nothing in 2028/29 or beyond.
- Wanstead Swimming Pool has £1.288m this year and nothing in any future year. That is the whole of the pool’s place in the council’s five-year capital programme.
The same appendix carries the council’s own one-line account of what happened: “The main contractor for the Wanstead project has gone into administration, creating a further delay. The Council is currently undertaking a review to determine the financial implications of this, as well as the cost of completing the project.”
On the pool, there is no such progress to report. The report says the leisure centre is a separate workstream and that the council is “currently undertaking a design options appraisal to establish the best way forward for this part of the scheme”. In other words the school building has a route to completion and the leisure centre still has an open question about what gets built.
The public meeting has no date
The petition’s first ask was a public meeting “at the earliest possible opportunity”. The report’s answer is that the council “will work with the school to identify an appropriate opportunity for a public meeting with parents and the wider school community, aligned with the recovery programme so that meaningful and up to date information can be provided on progress and next steps”.
There is no date in the report, and no month. A wider communications plan for parents, pupils and the community is described as “currently being drafted”.
What does exist is a weekly rhythm inside the council. The report says the project team meets the school every week, and that a weekly project group chaired by the Executive Director of Children’s Services oversees the work “to ensure barriers to delivery are identified and removed as swiftly as possible”.
The report also concedes the obvious risk in plain terms: “the timescale to practical completion remains subject to a number of delivery risks, given the complexity of completing the outstanding works on a partially completed site and within a live school environment.”
How the petition grew
The e-petition opened on the council’s own register on 18 August. It had 477 signatures by 27 August and 1,156 by 30 August, when the Leader published the council’s first substantial update on the project in six months. It reached 1,464 by this morning, and the officer report’s combined figure of 2,179 adds the paper petition to that.
For scale, the largest completed petition on the council’s register is “Save Redbridge Music School”, with 721.
How the project got here
The timeline is all on the council’s own website.
- 21 November 2024: a council release says construction is “moving full steam ahead” and will finish at the end of 2025.
- 9 May 2025: a council release says the scheme is “on track for completion in late 2025” and puts the cost at £16m.
- 17 February 2026: administrators are appointed to Jerram Falkus Construction Limited, company number 00820289, recorded in London Gazette notice 5059662.
- 19 February 2026: the council confirms the administration, says it has taken formal possession of the site and that work to appoint a new contractor has begun. It gives no timescale.
- 18 August 2026: the e-petition opens.
- 29 August 2026: the Leader publishes an update with no completion date.
- 24 September 2026: the petition is debated at Full Council.
We covered the petition when it had 477 signatures and again when term started with no contractor appointed.
What it means for you
- The debate is tonight, Thursday 24 September, at 7pm in the Council Chamber, Town Hall, Ilford High Road, IG1 1DD. Full Council meetings are open to the public.
- The recommendation in front of councillors is only to note the petition. A debate at Full Council does not commit the council to anything by itself.
- The e-petition is still open until 18 February 2027, so signing it now still adds to the total the council has to report.
- If you want the numbers behind the funding, they are in the Quarter 1 budgetary control report that Cabinet took on 17 September, not in tonight’s papers.
- The capital programme funds the school building into 2027/28. It funds the pool only to the end of this financial year.
- There is still no completion date for either the school building or the pool, and the leisure centre does not yet have an agreed design.
More Redbridge council coverage: Ilford planning news and Ilford roadworks and travel.
Update, 25 September 2026: the debate took place on Thursday night. The minutes have not yet been published. In his update on 25 September, the Leader, Cllr Kam Rai, said he had “already taken the formal decision to progress the appointment of a contractor to complete the school block”, and called the project his “number 1 priority”. He gave no completion date. Our report on the rest of the meeting has the other decisions.
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