Manchester council has put a controversial new secondary school earmarked for Gorton’s Nutsford Vale on hold because it ‘isn’t needed’ at present - after spending more than £4m preparing the land for it to be built.

Plans for the school, off Matthews Lane, had last year caused furore among local residents , who said it had taken them years to turn the site into an urban oasis that was now relied upon by the community as a green lung.

However the council said central Manchester was desperately in need of school places and there was no other viable site available.

Planning permission was finally granted eight months ago .

But in an abrupt change of heart, the council now says the school isn’t needed at the moment.

It has denied rumours that the pause is due to the cost of removing contaminants in the land, which historically was a tip and had already been found to contain cyanide and mercury.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

Instead it says a string of government-approved new secondaries have ‘changed the landscape’ and added more capacity into the schools system.

Manchester council first put forward its plans for a school in central Manchester in 2016.

At the time it pointed to a severe shortage of secondary places in the area and - after looking at a range of sites - later said Nutsford Vale was the only appropriate one available.

In a report dated September 2017 it said that even with a string of new government-approved free schools coming through the system, including two due to open that month - thought to refer to Eden Boys and Eden Girls and Cheetham Hill - and another slated for 2019, the city still needed more space.

“Even with these approved new free schools, there will still be unmet demand in the city, particularly in central and east Manchester and subsequently, a further new secondary school is needed to meet this demand,” it said.

Asked at a heated meeting a year ago about alternatives, Luthfur Rahman, executive member for schools, told councillors: ‘There is no plan B’.

(Image: UGC MEN)

Furious campaigners warned the site was heavily relied upon by the local community, however, while ward councillor Julie Reid said the council would not try such a plan ‘in Didsbury or Chorlton’.

Contaminants found in the land - which had been used as a tip until the 1980s - were also raised as a concern, but the council said they could be safely removed.

The school was eventually granted planning permission at a meeting in February 2018, when councillors were told the city was 330 places short for next September.

However the council now says the school is not currently needed, after all, because government has approved a series of free schools it had not factored in at the time. To date it has spent £4.3m scoping out the land, preparing it for construction and investigating contaminants.

The money to build it - £48m - has been ringfenced, it said, adding that planning permission will remain in place until 2021.

Rita Edge, of the Save Nutsford Vale campaign group, welcomed the pause.

“We were delighted to know we have won a reprieve, which is ostensibly what it is,” she said.

(Image: Sean Hansford)

“We have got two and a half years now before the planning consent expires. It’s quite shocking they’ve actually spent so much money and nothing has begun on it. Is this just about saving face?”

She said that since further testing was done on the ground in the wake of planning permission - from which she said no results had been shared - nothing further had happened to the site, with the community using it as they had done previously.

“We are still using the vale,” she said.

“Everyone who goes onto it says ‘they must be mad’. This spring was absolutely magnificent. The blossom this year was incredible they’ve been mowing the verges properly so it looks really great.”

Asked about the delay, Manchester council listed a number of government-approved free schools it said ‘weren’t in the frame’ when it approved Nutsford Vale, meaning it had not factored in the extra capacity they would bring.

Its examples included the two Cheetham Hill schools, however, despite those already having been open for six months by the time the Nutsford Vale school was approved.

It also pointed to the expanded Didsbury High, even though that was already well along the government’s approval process a year before Nutsford Vale was agreed.

(Image: Sean Hansford)

When asked to explain the apparent discrepancy, the council said that despite being aware of the schools, it had not had clarity on the government’s funding situation at the time, so it had continued to plan ‘for the worst case scenario’.

A spokesman said: "We've taken a decision for the moment not to go ahead with building the planned school on Matthews Lane.

"Although the site is ready for a school and the funds are all in place for it, a series of free school approvals from the Department for Education mean that for the moment this scheme doesn't need to go ahead.

"At the time when we identified a need for a significant number of additional secondary school places in the city, our best option to achieve this was for us to build a brand new school using money allocated to us by the DfE specifically to fund additional pupil places.

"Since then however the DfE has separately approved a number of secondary free schools for the city that weren't in the frame when we made our plans for Matthews Lane.

"Between them these new free schools will create a sufficient number of places to meet pupil need over the next couple of years, although clearly we'll be keeping this in review.

"In the meantime planning permission for a school on Matthews Lane lasts for the next three years, the site remains ready for future use and development, and the funds are still there for us to draw on when we need to."

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