They envisage that the school facility will also provide space for activities outside of school hours and at the weekends, including being a much needed church building for those churches, The Church of England and Kings Hill Christian Fellowship that currently are meeting in the Community Centre, and for a third church looking for space to worship here.  All three are unified about this. Plans by Kent County Council to use the same building recently failed and the Council is assisting the group with relevant information. KCC Councillor Richard Long supports the initiative, as does Dave Waller, the UKIP candidate and Kings Hill parish councillor. The initiative is as a result of the shortage of primary school places in Kings Hill, and the Christian ethos will give a different characteristic to the third school. “We want to make it clear that, as parents of both schools, that we are delighted with our children's educations at the schools and this move is not to undermine either school in anyway. This is about the future for Kings Hill primary demand and it does seem to offer the only real alternative to KCC's own budgetary restrictions.”

The group would very much like to hear from parents whose children would start in reception in September 2012 and September 2013 to support the move.

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Whilst I am opposed in principle to the concept of Free Schools as taking state funds to create schools that will inevitably clash with any attempts to provide a coordinated system for all children (amongst a number of arguments), I have considerable sympathy for this group. Kings Hill is served by two good primary schools, Kings Hill Primary and The Discovery, but the development has outgrown this to the extent that children living between them, on the periphery of the estate or moving into the area cannot get admission to one of their local schools and finish up being transported outside their local community to school. KCC has attempted to firefight this problem by increasing the Discovery School by sitting up temporary classrooms, but this is no long term solution. A KCC Paper written in 2009 talked of strategic planning, but this is yet another area where this has not happened, although the issue could have been forecast some years ago. Normally with major new developments, the Developers are responsible for funding schools to match the population; why has this not happened at Kings Hill. Indeed reading the documentation of the proposers, it is evident they would prefer not to have to go down this route. Fortunately, for some of the residents of Kings Hill, there are those amongst them who have the abilities to bring such a school into existence, although whether stay the course for the long term is a matter of speculation.  As browsers of this website will realise, my main interest is in school admissions, and a third competitor school operating outside the coordinated arrangements run by Kent County Council, could be very destructive of the admission process. To whom will they give priority? Already there are worrying signs elsewhere that state funded Free Schools are being set up to ensure that only 'nice' children, or those that fit certain religious criteria are admitted. I await the plans for the Kings Academy admission process with interest. Some of these issues are already being debated on the Kings Hill Life website.

Radio Kent and Kent on Sunday are both following up this issue, Radio Kent likely to cover it on Monday morning from about 7.15 p.m., including a comment by me.