MORRISTON: ‘It’s bedlam on this road’: neighbours object as council pushes on with special school site

Every one of the eight responses to a legal notice on the land earmarked for Ysgol Calon Lân, Swansea’s new 350-place special school, was an objection, cabinet papers reveal, and the council is recommending that councillors press on regardless.

The council’s paper for next Thursday’s cabinet puts the eight respondents at “around 0.00321% of the total population of Swansea”, and says consultations like this “are likely to attract engagement from individuals with strongly held views”.

Swansea Council had to advertise its intention to take the land out of general use before it can be set aside for the school. The notice on the site off Mynydd Garnllwyd Road in Morriston ran in the Evening Post on 27 July and 3 August, with objections closing at 5pm on 18 August.

The first detailed plans for the school, with overnight beds, a hydrotherapy pool and a forest school, were published at the end of August. It would bring the city’s special school provision under one roof, with 100 more places than now, and the council says it is due to open in April 2028.

‘It’s bedlam on this road’

The objections, published in full with names removed, cover traffic, wildlife, privacy and the way neighbours found out.

One resident wrote that the road is gridlocked every day. “At school finish times it’s bedlam on this road, no emergency vehicles would be able to access the road at this time,” they said.

Another, whose home borders the eastern edge of the site, said many neighbours were elderly and had no internet access, and that “no consultation has taken place with homes that will be directly impacted by this development”.

A third called the lamppost notices “completely sneaky”, saying they had been put “outside the field on the side of the road you cannot walk on”, and asked when residents would get timelines “as you are being totally vague about all of this”.

Residents also listed red kites, a sparrowhawk and bats on the land, which one objector said is not “surplus to requirements”, as the council’s notice described it. Another said their home at the top of the site would become “an ‘island'” surrounded on three sides by the school.

Three asked why the Bishop Vaughan Catholic School site opposite could not be used once that school moves. One said residents had been told by the diocese the land carried an educational covenant, “but somehow you have been able to sell that land for houses and executive houses at that!”

Council’s answers: traffic, the Bishop Vaughan site and a wildfire

The council answers each objection in turn. On traffic, it says a transport assessment found the local road network “has a good recent safety record” and that the junctions “are expected to continue operating within capacity”, with drop-off and parking kept on site.

On the Bishop Vaughan site, the council says it does not own the land. It belongs to the Archdiocese, and according to the council the money from its sale is needed to fund the 15% contribution to the new Bishop Vaughan at the former Daniel James site, where demolition was well under way in June. The two projects’ timelines do not line up, it adds.

The council confirms the site is about twice the size shown in the old development plan, which it says is needed for an accessible school, parking, drop-off space and drainage. It says the existing paths into Parc Llewellyn from Mynydd Garnllwyd Road and Llewellyn Park Drive will be kept, and that legal checks found no rights of way from residents’ gardens onto the land.

The council also discloses, for the first time, that there was a wildfire on the site in August 2026. It says the ecological survey carried out in August 2025 will be redone before the planning application goes in.

£6.9m committed and a planning application later this year

If cabinet agrees, the council says the full £6.9m already approved to take the school to construction stage can be spent, and a full planning application could be submitted later in 2026. Because the council is the applicant, its own planning committee will decide.

The council says letters were hand-delivered to every house surrounding the land, posters went up in shops and libraries, and bilingual notices were displayed at three locations, although there is no legal requirement to put up site notices at all.

The council is blunt about the alternative. If councillors refuse to release the land, it says, “the new build for Ysgol Calon Lân on this land will not be realised, and a new site must be found.”

The Welsh Government has backed the business case for the school, but the council says funding and timescale “is still to be confirmed” and depends on a final business case, planning permission and drainage approval. Cabinet meets at 11am on Thursday 15 October.