Trinity Grammar school building giant aquatic centre - without telling the neighbours

PRIVATE school Trinity Grammar has been likened to a playground bully after it started work on a giant new aquatic centre.

PRIVATE school Trinity Grammar has been likened to a playground bully after it started work on a giant new aquatic centre and grandstand without consulting neighbours or the local council.

The Summer Hill school’s Centenary Aquatic Centre, which boasts a 50m olympic pool, stadium seating and gymnasium, was given the green light under a fast-tracked approval process that bypasses traditional planning regulations.

Ashfield Mayor Lucille McKenna said: “We are very unhappy that this is the route they have chosen to go down. It is very unfriendly to the community.”

The elite private school, which charges pupils up to $29,550 a year, already has a 25m pool. The new facility, understood to cost more than $13 million, will have underwater video and electronic touch timers.

Neighbours received written notice that work on the four-storey building was due to start just two days before three houses owned by the school were demolished.

“It is a huge development. Compared to what they were approved to build before, this is mammoth — it is a very large swimming pool with a stadium on top and extra classrooms that is the height of a four-storey building,” Cr McKenna said.

An artist’s impression of Trinity Grammar’s new Olympic pool.

The school had received planning permission for a much smaller underground pool building several years ago but did not go ahead.

“The school has been sitting on what it is going to do and council officers had some discussions six or eight weeks ago,” she said.

“Then, about two and a half weeks ago, council received in the mail a set of plans with the complying development certificate to say they were proceeding with the CDC.”

The new building was approved by certifiers Dix Gardner. Director Lyall Dix has had reprimands and fines from the Building Professionals Board.

Dix Gardner building surveyor Maurice Freixas said: “The legislation allows this to happen, the rest is politics. Basically the state government changed the legislation in 2008 to stop ‘not in my backyard’ things like this from happening.”

But neighbour and Trinity old boy Stephen Van der Sluys said: “Details of the proposed development have been concealed.

“The once great high school I attended now has nothing in common with the community in which it is located — in fact it has become the neighbourhood bully.”

Ashfield Council is expected to discuss the proposal tonight.

Trinity Grammar headmaster Milton Cujes was unavailable for comment yesterday.