OKEHAMPTON'S?primary school is able to cope with current capacity demands, town councillors were told last week.

The assurance came from the school's headteacher after it emerged that developers have lodged an appeal of non-determination for a planned new school site to the east of the town.

Leander Developments submitted an outline application to West Devon Borough Council for a primary school on land adjacent to Baldwin Drive in September last year.

The land had been allocated for a new primary school as part of the Local Plan, but has not been safeguarded. The developer lodged an appeal on the grounds of non-determination, after the borough council failed to give notice of its decision on the application within the standard 13-week period.

Borough planning officer Anna Henderson-Smith explained what slowed down the planning process: 'In terms of the time delay, there were a few intricacies to do with the infrastructure, and delivery of the road to the development. We had to scrutinise and study an ecological survey, and this all took time that carried us over the limit.'

The borough council can now no longer determine the application.

But borough councillors discussed the outline application for a school on the site at their planning meeting last week. The application was before members in order to ascertain what decision they would have reached were it a live application, so that the planning inspectorate could see what decision would have been taken.

Councillors were shown indicative plans of how the layout of the site may look if given the go-ahead. They voted seven to one in favour of the outline application for a school on the site.

Okehampton Town Council has been keen to see progress with the planning process to avoid any unnecessary strain on the town's primary school.

Cllr Paul Vachon told the town council planning meeting last week: 'The genuine worry now is that if we don't do all we can to push the school development through, then the land will be built on.'

Cllr David Weekes said: 'Our current primary has only just come out of special measures and I am worried putting more strain on it could send it back into special measures. It's the biggest primary in Devon and this could be detrimental to our children's futures.'

Headteacher Hazel Fox attended a full meeting of the town council on Monday to discuss how the school was doing since its last Ofsted inspection, and lay to rest any concerns over its current capacity.

She said: 'We have 620 pupils altogether, including the nursery provision. This makes us, I believe, the largest primary school in Devon.

'We have two classes with over 30 children in, but several below 25, with some as low as 21 pupils in a class. We have no problem with overcrowding at this moment in time.

'There has been a slow growth at the school. Some year groups are at 70 pupils, when we have the capacity to have 90 children per year group, but we do not have that many in any group.

'The closest we come to that is 86 children in Early Years, so even there, we have four spaces left. The September intake doesn't look problematic either.

'Though we have rooms and seats, we are lacking in toilet provision for children. This is something I am campaigning for, and funding to improve the toilets is something we are looking for.

'I can understand why people are concerned, what with the new builds and development in the town. At the moment though, there are spaces for children at the school.

'The future issue of oversubscription is a problem for us all to solve together, as a learning community, council and community.'