Durban - The KwaDukuza Municipality is trying to stop the establishment of a private school in the burgeoning Ballito area on the North Coast, even though the education department says the area is crying out for more educational facilities.
The school has already enrolled 250 children and employed 14 teachers.
The municipality has launched an urgent Durban High Court application, crying foul over PLG Schools’ intention to open the Ballito Academy on January 15 at a now-disused hotel.
The municipality says special consent is required and that the academy’s application, lodged in November, would only be considered next March.
But PLG has launched a counter-application, accusing the municipality of breaking the rule that requires special consent applications to be considered within two months.
It has been dealing with officials from the municipality regarding the proposed opening since October.
The building in Nandi Mthembu Drive was originally built as offices, but was converted into a hotel just before the 2010 World Cup.
In his affidavit in the urgent interdict application to stop the school from opening, which came before Judge King Ndlovu, the municipality’s manager of development control, Farlan Naidoo, claims that, apart from not having special consent, the school does not have a certificate of occupancy.
“Hotel premises are not suitable for use as schools without alteration and no building plans have been submitted,” said Naidoo.
“This is important to ensure safe occupation of the building. If the respondent is allowed to occupy an unsuitable or unsafe building, especially with schoolchildren, it could have disastrous consequences.”
Naidoo also raised concerns regarding an increase in traffic, “with the road system already overloaded”.
He said the municipality first became aware of the proposed school through press reports in November which said it could accommodate 1 100 pupils, and called on potential pupils to attend an open day and reserve places.
In his counter-application, to compel the municipality to consider the special consent application, which was lodged on November 14,PLG director of education Noel Coetzee said the headmaster, Ryan Doig, had already met two municipal officials on site in October.
“They investigated whether there had been any alterations to the property and were informed that only dry walling had been removed which had been erected by the previous tenant, Signature Life, which used the premises for a hotel and for which an occupancy certificate had been granted.
“We have put up other dry walls to create classrooms, none of which requires approved building plans.”
Doig had gone to the municipal offices to arrange another occupancy certificate but had been informed that there was still a valid one on record and an application for another certificate should only be made after the application for special consent had been granted. Coetzee said to suggest that the building was unsafe or unsuitable was false.
He said a traffic impact assessment report had been prepared and submitted with the special consent application, but the impact was considered low.
In terms of the integrated development plan, the area was designated as mixed-use, and there was already a business park, various shops, restaurants, a gym and a baby academy, all of which required special consent.
“The municipality’s deliberate conduct to delay considering what should be a simple application for consent to operate within this zone, as it has allowed many others to do, is clearly arbitrary and capricious,” he said.
D Singh, the chief educational specialist of planning in the area, said in a letter that the department had been trying to build a high school in the area but it had struggled to acquire land.
“In the meantime, the demand has been ever increasing. And we welcome any initiative, public or private, to provide affordable schooling to middle-income families,” he said.
Judge Ndlovu refused to grant an interim interdict. He adjourned both applications until December 17.
The Mercury