Urgent action is needed to create more school places due to the amount of new housing being built, a councillor has warned.
Councillor Bob Packham told North Yorkshire Council’s Selby and Ainsty area committee said primary schools in his area were already full before new housing was built.
Cllr Packham, Labour councillor for the Sherburn-in-Elmet division, said that based on planning permission already granted, there was a surplus of 20 primary school places in the Sherburn area currently forecast.
But he added: “Unfortunately, I strongly expect that there will be a lot more development than that in Sherburn before 2030.
“We have two planning applications in South Milford and Sherburn at the moment which account for 480 houses which are likely to be dealt with this year.
“We’ve also got a developer intention to submit additional housing which would be another 530 and one of those is on a previously allocated site so it’s almost certain to go ahead.”
Cllr Packham said these developments would lead to a shortfall of 232 spaces.
“Already both our primary schools in Sherburn are full and we have a little bit of capaicty in South Milford.
“The situation isn’t much better for the secondary forecast, where we’ve already got a minus 73 figure.
“I want to know what the contingency situation is because as it stands, we’re clearly going to run out of capacity very, very quickly if any of those come forward.”
In response, Jon Holden, the council’s head of school organisation and transport, said he understood the councillor’s concerns.
He added: “I absolutely agree with the numbers that you gave.
“We are actively having discussions with the multi-academy trust who operate the high school and with the governing board of Sherburn’s Athelstan (Community Primary School).
“Athelstan was expanded relatively recently and there’s the potential for further expansion. We do expect to take a report to the executive uh in the short term and clearly we’ll um share that information with interested local members before that goes.”
