EXPOSING FELDEN HALL SCHOOL CORRUPTION & SAFETY

I did not leave my previous role lightly.

I was part of a senior leadership team working within SEN provision and had direct involvement with projects alongside Witherslack Group. I made the decision to leave of my own accord, in part because of concerns I had around risk, decision-making, and the direction of travel I was witnessing; both at another school site and in the planning of this one.

That is not something I say for effect. It is something I carry with me, and it is the reason I feel compelled to write this now.

I am not opposed to specialist education. Quite the opposite. I have dedicated my career to it. We urgently need more SEN provision across the country. But that provision must be safe, properly planned, and built on sound judgement from the outset.What I am seeing in relation to Felden Hall raises serious concerns that this standard has not been met.This is no longer about speculation or perception. Independent expert reports have already concluded that significant highway safety risks were not properly identified or evaluated before planning permission was granted . The infrastructure serving the site has been shown to be constrained, with limited visibility and no safe provision for pedestrians . These are fundamental safeguarding issues.More concerning still is that these problems are now being acknowledged after approval. The Council has accepted that there are issues and that key information was deficient. From a professional standpoint, that should never happen in an SEN setting. Safeguarding is not something you revisit once a school is open. It must be designed, tested, and resolved before a single child arrives. Based on my experience, I am deeply concerned that this environment, as it currently stands, presents a real and serious risk to children. Not because anyone intends harm, but because the conditions in which those children will arrive, move, and be managed do not appear to have been fully resolved.  I have spent the last 5 months raising these concerns through the appropriate channels. I have engaged with Dacorum Borough Council, the Department for Education, and others involved in this process. I have sought meetings, clarity, and reassurance. What I have seen instead is a pattern of delay, partial answers, and issues being addressed only after they have been exposed.If this continues to be ignored, I will have no choice but to escalate this further. That includes making public the full body of correspondence between the Highways Authority, the Department for Education, Dacorum Borough Council, and others involved, so there is complete transparency around what was known, when it was known, and how decisions were ultimately made.

That is not a step I take lightly. But at this point, remaining silent would be a greater failure.

This is not about stopping a school. It is about ensuring that when it opens, it does not place children at avoidable risk.

Within any SEN provision, the environment is everything. Children do not adapt to unsafe systems. Staff cannot compensate indefinitely for flawed design. And once a school is operational, those risks become real, immediate, and far harder to correct.

I have seen what good looks like. I have also seen what happens when early warnings are overlooked.

All I am asking is that this is properly examined before it is too late.

Because when it comes to safeguarding, the consequences of getting it wrong are not theoretical.

They are real.