Ballito Academy threatened

The prospect of an affordable high school for middle-income earners within the Ballito area is in jeopardy after an objection to the PLG Ballito Academy was raised.

The PLG education group bought the defunct Signature Life hotel, in the Ballito business park, this year with the intention of launching a school with fees from R1 500 for Grade R, to R3 200 for Grade 11 – on the same level as fee-paying government schools.

Already 297 children have been enrolled and 14 teachers employed for the school, which is scheduled to open its doors on January 21.

However, acting on objections from local business, the KwaDukuza municipality applied to the Durban high court last week to block the school, saying that it had not applied in time for special consent to operate.

PLG has in turn accused the municipality of acting in bad faith, as it has been dealing with the municipality regarding the opening since October.

The building in Nandi Mthembu Drive was originally built as offices, then converted into a hotel for the 2010 World Cup.

KDM manager of development control, Farlan Naidoo, claimed in court papers that not only did the school not have special consent, it did not have an occupancy certificate.

“Hotel premises are not suitable for use as schools without alteration and no building plans have been submitted,” he told the court, adding that children could not be allowed to occupy an unsuitable or unsafe building.

Replying to these allegations, PLG director of education Noel Coetzee said headmaster Ryan Doig had met municipal officials on site in October and that the building had not been structurally altered. He had shown them that only dry-walling put up by the previous owners had been removed. Any suggestion that the building was unsafe was false.

“We have put up other dry walls to create classrooms, none of which requires approved building plans.”

Doig had gone to the municipality to arrange another occupancy certificate but had been told that the existing one was valid and application for another certificate should only be made after an application for special consent to operate the school had been granted.

Naidoo told the court that the special consent might only be considered in March, after the school’s scheduled opening.

The prospect of 1000 children being dropped off and picked up twice a day in the narrow road feeding PLG Ballito Academy was inconceivable, the principal objector to the new school in the Ballito business park said this week.

Ruijter Stevens Properties, owners of The Circle centre, objected to PLG Ballito Academy taking over the former Signature Life hotel in Nathi Mthembu Drive, leading to the high court application to block the school opening its doors in January.

“In principle we do not have objection to a school,” Tom Ruijter told the Courier this week.

Besides The Circle, the company owns four pieces of land between The Circle and the Academy building and along Nathi Mthembu Drive.

“However, we have plans to develop those properties, and their business could negatively affect our plans for the future.

“We had to fight hard to get zoning rights for our land, and now these people come and want to do things their way, move in and get the zonings later. I wouldn’t have a problem if they did things the right way and addressed some issues first, but they haven’t been addressed,” he said.

At a recent open day at the school, Ruijter said, hundreds of cars parked on the verges and on his properties.

“They say they have plans for over 1 000 pupils. Can you imagine what it would be like of all those children being dropped off and picked up every day?

“Sorry, but there is too much at stake for this to go unchallenged,” Ruijter said.

It is understood that PLG wants to buy Ruijter Stevens Properties land for parking and other developments, but no progress has been made yet.