I WRITE on behalf of the governors of St. Peter's School, York to correct a number of misleading and inaccurate statements reported in your newspaper last week regarding our acquisition of the Queen Anne school site and the subsequent sale of the school's land on the Avenue.

These are the salient facts.

Our original bid for the Queen Anne School in January 2000 was unconditional in the sum of £2.45 million

That bid, and a subsequent letter to 6,000 local residents in February, made it clear that the Avenue site would become redundant and would be sold for residential development, including an element of affordable housing

By July 2000, City of York Council was considering four offers for the Queen Anne School site. All but that from St. Peter's involved a degree of development and were conditional on planning permission being granted. It is normal commercial practice to link an offer to suitable planning approval

By late November last year when councillors recommended the St. Peter's bid, we had raised our price to £4.8 million against the competition. It was at this stage that we had also received offers for our Avenue site for development, all of which were conditional upon a planning consent.

Our solicitors consequently advised that our greatly increased bid, and the conditions pertaining to the offers for the Avenue site, would expose the school and individual governors as trustees of a registered charity to undue and unacceptable risk. As a result we immediately briefed council officers as to our position.

To help us to address this concern the council agreed, after discussions, a deferred payment arrangement.

This permitted the council to meet its legal completion date of March 31 this year which was vital.

By the end of January this year our bid was again confirmed as unconditional. We have subsequently negotiated additional borrowing facilities which will be available at the end of next March.

I do not believe this sequence of events justifies the harsh criticisms recently levelled at the school. Throughout we have kept in close touch with council officers to expedite what have been complex and long drawn out negotiations.

We have had to balance the interests of our school and our legal responsibilities as trustees of a charity, against the aspirations of the local communities and the recommendations of our professional advisers.

In our position what reasonable person could say that they would have adopted a different approach?

D M Naylor,

Chairman of Governors,

St. Peter's School, York.

Updated: 11:06 Tuesday, May 15, 2001