DREAMS of a North Swindon school took a vital step further after the council’s planning committee gave it the go-ahead.

Councillors unanimously gave permission for proposals to build the Oakhurst Primary School in Pioneer Road, Priory Vale, despite objections on traffic grounds from Haydon Wick parish councillors.

The school has been marred by controversy after parents campaigned for the school and then an Islamic education centre came forward with a rival bid to run it as a faith school.

However in February, Swindon Council was given the contract to run the new school by the School’s Adjudicator.

Councillors gave their unqualified support last night for the plans at the meeting at the council offices, but questioned how something that had been promised to residents from the start had taken so long to come to fruition.

Coun Vera Tomlinson (Abbey Meads/Cons), who supported the bid, said: “It has taken a long time to arrive at this planning stage and the journey has been fraught with hurdles and problems, the main ones being raising the funding.”

She pointed out that parents had been assured by developers, when looking at properties in the area, that there would be a local school and praised both Coun Justin Tomlinson and those parents for their continued pressure on this issue.

Responding to Haydon Wick parish council’s concerns, Coun Tomlinson said: “I see no problem whatsoever.

“In this day and age the majority of parents and children who are in walking distance of the school will do just that, leave their car at home and walk to school.”

Planning officer Nicola Rogers said that measures had been taken to encourage parents and their children to use greener methods of transport rather than driving to the school which included two easy access points from the front and rear of the school building and cycle storage.

There will however also be 19 parking spaces at the front of the school and 23 spaces inside the site.

However, Coun Stephen Pike of Haydon Wick parish council said that although they had no objections to the school, he dismissed suggestions that local children would be walking to school anyway.

“The reality of the matter is this simply will not happen at least not in the numbers that will be required for it to work,” he said.

He also argued there would be significant traffic disruption, which included parents waiting to turn right across the traffic into the proposed parking spaces.

In response Martin Bailey from transport management said because of the nature of the short drop offs this would create a continual flow of traffic and it was not viewed as a problem.