CONGRATULATIONS to the staff and pupils of Llanwern High in achieving probably the greatest improvement in GCSE results in Wales.

This follows Newport City Council’s decision to invest £29 million to replace the run down Hartridge building withnew facilities, creating a new name, new image and new attitude. The aim was to increase the attractiveness of the school to pupils and parents, in Ringland and Alway, Llanwern and Langstone.

Sadly, all this progress is put in peril by this very same council undermining its educational and financial strategies by proposing a Traveller camp on the school’s doorstep, on land that was scheduled for housing, so raising an estimated £6m towards the money borrowed to build the £29m new school.

I am a long term advocate of properly run official traveller sites as the only solution to the problem of unofficial sites. However, the official site must be in the right place.

Its effect on the school, the Welsh school, the RSPCA Animal Shelter and the Road Safety Centre, not to mention local residents would be devastating.

That is why ten thousand signatures were obtained for petitions opposing this and the allotment site adjacent to the SDR. Surely such a number cannot be ignored.

I urge the council to look again at the former speedway ground, which wasn’t available when the original sites were proposed.

David Hando Hartridge Newport