Flintshire council eyes restart of £55m Catholic super-school consultation
Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet will be asked next week to approve fresh statutory consultations on two school reorganisation proposals halted in March after a legal challenge.
The first would close St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School in Saltney and amalgamate St David’s Catholic Primary School in Mold, St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Flint and St Richard Gwyn Catholic High School into a new 3-18 all-through Catholic school on the existing co-located St Richard Gwyn and St Mary’s site.
The second is a separate consultation on the proposed amalgamation of Saltney Ferry Primary School and Saltney Wood Memorial School.
Both consultations were stopped in March 2026 following a late legal challenge from the Governors of St David’s Catholic Primary School in Mold, sent through commercial solicitors Addleshaw Goddard.
The challenge raised concerns about the consultation process, financing, school transport and provision for children with additional learning needs.
The Council says the legal advice it sought in response could also have had implications for the Saltney schools’ consultation, which is why both processes were halted together.
Officers say the time required to consider that advice meant the statutory timescales set out in the School Organisation Code 2018 could no longer be met.
A revised School Organisation Code 2026 has since taken effect, and a fresh consultation under the new Code is now described as the only lawful way forward.
Cabinet is asked to approve both consultations when it meets on Wednesday 13 May.
The Council says it remains of the view that the original proposals should be brought forward for determination by Cabinet.
Claire Homard, Chief Officer for Education and Youth, said: “Restarting the consultation process will ensure that stakeholders and members of the public have a further opportunity to share their feedback before any decisions are made.
“It was the right decision to cease the original process while the legal challenge was fully considered. Having now reviewed the position, we remain confident that these proposals represent the right way forward.
“We would strongly encourage everyone with an interest to take part in the forthcoming consultations and make their views known.”
Both proposals are described in the council comms as aiming to reduce surplus places amid declining pupil numbers, with all schools concerned consistently under-subscribed.
The substantive Catholic schools plan is unchanged from the version halted in March.
The capital cost stands at £55m based on a 2024 feasibility study, with officers warning that figure will need updating to reflect construction inflation.
Welsh Government would meet 85 per cent of the cost through its Sustainable Communities for Learning programme, leaving Flintshire to borrow £8.25m to cover its 15 per cent share.
Once interest and the Minimum Revenue Provision over a 50-year repayment period are factored in, the total cost rises to an estimated £79.5m, including £800,000 in additional transport costs.
Three of the four Catholic schools would stay open on their existing sites until the new building is complete, with pupils brought together under a single school name from September 2027.
St Anthony’s in Saltney would be treated differently.
The report proposes closing it on 31 August 2027, a year before the others, with the site not retained for Catholic education.
The Diocese of Wrexham and the Council say the school has “reached a tipping point in terms of its viability and sustainability”.
Its current roll of 47 against a capacity of 152 is forecast to fall to 35 pupils by 2030, and Diocesan figures show 13 of its 65 pupils are baptised Catholics.
Saltney parents wishing to access Catholic education would be offered places at Venerable Edward Morgan Catholic Primary in Shotton or could apply across the border to Cheshire West.
The wider Catholic schools proposal would remove 397 places from the local school network, 298 primary and 99 secondary.
The four schools share a combined repairs and maintenance backlog of £1.456m, and the oldest, St Richard Gwyn, is over 70 years old.
The new report addresses two issues that surfaced repeatedly during the first consultation.
It pre-empts a Mold-specific concern that closing St David’s would leave the town short of school places given planned housing growth.
Officers argue Mold’s existing primaries can absorb extra demand, citing Ysgol Bryn Gwalia where 73.55 per cent of pupils already travel in from outside the immediate area, and Ysgol Gymraeg Glanrafon where the figure is 81.63 per cent.
The use of prudential borrowing for the council’s £8.25m share, also a flashpoint in the previous consultation, is defended as “a lawful mechanism available to local authorities” under the Local Government Act 2003.
Detailed figures for the separate Saltney Ferry and Saltney Wood Memorial amalgamation proposal are expected in the Cabinet papers when published in full.
If approved, both proposals would be implemented by September 2027.
In March, a special meeting of the Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee was abandoned after councillors found inconsistencies of more than £10m in a “true cost summary” document.
The summary had been requested via a Notice of Motion brought by Liberal Democrat councillor Andrew Parkhurst, intended to set out the project’s full costs in plain English for the public.
Cabinet Member for Finance and Social Value Cllr Paul Johnson conceded errors at the time.
Liberal Democrat Cllr David Coggins Cogan and Cllr Alasdair Ibbotson of Flintshire People’s Voice both pushed back over the figures, with Cllr Ibbotson highlighting that the document showed first-year transport costs of £212,000 against an officer estimate of £93,000 a year ongoing.
The same Cabinet meeting will consider two Internal Audit reports into Notices of Motion brought by Cllr Coggins Cogan, which alleged that parents had been “shadow-banned” from applying to St Anthony’s and that staff social media was being monitored to silence opposition.
If approved, the new Catholic schools consultation would run from the Summer term 2026 through to Spring 2027, with a final decision returning to Cabinet at a later date.
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