Credit: This story was first seen on the London Evening Standard
The top ‘pre-prep’ school attended by Princes William and Harry has infuriated its wealthy neighbours by installing a ‘garish’ blue playground without permission, the London Evening Standard reports.
Residents around the garden square in Notting Hill have branded the play area, at Wetherby School for boys and next-door Pembridge Hall School for girls, an eyesore with its netball hoops and painted markings.
Some say the ‘obnoxious cacophony’ of ‘screaming children’ has left their once tranquil gardens uninhabitable for four hours every school day.
Bosses of Pembridge and Wetherby — which are both run by the Alpha Plus chain of independent schools — have applied for retrospective planning permission to lay the surface, which replaced a traditional black asphalt playground in August last year.
It says the cushioned material will protect pupils in the play area from injury.
Wetherby’s pupils could include Prince George, who has been tipped to attend the school or its new smaller sister site, Wetherby Kensington. It also counts Andrew Lloyd Webber, Julian Fellowes, Hugh Grant and Romeo Beckham among its alumni.
Parents today hit out at the objections, branding residents ‘churlish’ and their complaints as ‘over the top’.
But residents of Pembroke Square, where three-bedroom flats are valued at £5m, have made a series of objections to the council against the ‘cynical, retro-active’ bid. In a joint letter, Anthony Doherty, Mariza Wellesley-Wesley and John and Gabriela Travis wrote: ‘The changes contribute to increasingly intolerable, nuisance levels of noise resulting from growing numbers of screaming children hurling and bouncing balls and playing other games in the area’s increasingly cramped space.
‘The resulting cacophony is obnoxious. Even with the windows closed, the din is inescapable.’
But parents at the school today hit back. One 42-year-old mother said: “This is ridiculously over the top. If the children go out there it’s only usually during a play break of about 10 minutes. Everyone is very considerate. This is just churlish.”
A final decision is set to be made by Kensington and Chelsea council’s planning committee next week.
A spokesman for the school said: “We have had a playground at the back of Pembridge Hall School for many decades. We replaced the surface of the playground last summer. We were advised by the council that we were required to obtain a retrospective planning consent for the change of colour of the safety play surface. We have been consulting locally and are pleased to engage with our neighbours about any concerns they may have.”