GREAT Alne Primary School may not have to close after all.
Members of Warwickshire County Council recently voted to close the village school at the end of this academic year.
Education chiefs had proposed the closure due to a significant reduction in pupils joining over the last five years – from 102 in January 2021 to 13 in January 2026.
A WCC spokesman said the school had become “financially unviable” and with no projected increase in numbers and a growing budget deficit, the school would not be able to sustain its “financial and educational responsibilities”.
But WCC’s Liberal Democrat councillors have called in the decision, triggering a pause on the closure and forcing a review by the Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
Cabinet voted unanimously on Wednesday April 16 to close the school at the end of August, a decision reached after less than eight and a half minutes of debate.
The Lib Dem group is challenging the closure on the grounds of a number of specific failures in the way the decision was reached. This includes the closure process itself encouraging parents to move their children to other schools, therefore increasing the decline in pupil numbers, parents being incorrectly told by the council they could not name Great Alne as a Reception choice for September 2026, and, in light of plans for 6,762 new homes being proposed for the area under the South Warwickshire Local Plan, Lib Dem councillors argue the decision should have been postponed until future demand for primary school places in the area could be properly assessed.
Coun Jerry Roodhouse, leader of the Liberal Democrat Group, said: “This is a permanent decision about a school that has served its community for generations, and it was made in less time than it takes to make a cup of tea. What makes it so difficult to accept is that the council was working with figures it had itself distorted.
“Parents were wrongly told they could not even put Great Alne down as a school choice, so the numbers used to justify this closure never accurately reflected how many families wanted to send their children there. A process built on flawed data cannot produce a fair outcome, and the scrutiny committee now has both the opportunity and the obligation to look at this properly.”
The call-in will now go before a monitoring officer who will decide if there are ‘valid reasons’ for the call-in.
If accepted, it will move to the relevant Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which must meet within ten working days. The committee can either refer the decision back to Cabinet for reconsideration or take no further action.
