FEARS that Okehampton?s new primary school will not be ready in time to accommodate hundreds of new children moving to the town were voiced at a public meeting last week. Concerned parents said the accommodation at the current primary school was at maximum and a new school needed to be built now, not in three years? time. The catalyst for the new school has been the approval of planning permission for a 500-home development on the eastern edge of Okehampton. The developers have agreed to sell a site for a second primary school in the town for a nominal fee of £1 as part of its £2-million injection into the local infrastructure. Officers from Devon County Council told a public meeting in the Charter Hall last Wednesday that the school would initially cater for 210 pupils in 2010 and would grow to 420 places by 2020. The site, between Crediton Road and Exeter Road, currently had an agricultural tenancy on it and would not be acquired by the county council until September 2009 after it had secured planning permission. Although the council admits the timetable would be tight, it expects to erect the building in 12 months. Okehampton mother Ann Marie Smith said: ?My concern is that we are not building the school now yet we are going to have more houses now. ?The teachers at the primary school are already pushed and the classrooms are at maximum. Why should our children suffer? There should have been a school first and houses second.? The meeting was told that temporary accommodation would be provided in the short-term at the existing school for 60 extra children, but chairman of Okehampton Hamlets Parish Council Derek Webber said this was not enough: ?Where are the children going to go from the 200 houses already being built in Exeter Road? Someone needs to get into the real world.? Headteacher of Okehampton Primary Brian Cunningham said he shared the concerns of the community and he and his governors had been on this case for some time. ?We do have the capacity for a modicum of expansion but where we are very much squeezed is in the extended curriculum and the enriching activities we provide,? he said. There was no longer an infant library because it was being used as a classroom, the meeting heard. Mr Cunningham said: ?What I want to see is capacity ahead of need so we grow into it. We do not want to grow any bigger as a school.? Local resident Maureen MacDonald asked if there were going to be designated areas for admission because if not there would be a substantial increase in traffic up and down the town. Strategic planning group officer Debbie Capshaw said this and other details had yet to be discussed. It was likely that some children coming from the new development would start school at the current primary and then be transferred when the new one opened. There were concerns that schools at either ends of the town would bring in a competitive element that parents did not wish to see. Emma Cooper said she felt the school would split the town ?down the middle? and suggested the county council bought the rugby club ground and extended the existing school. Debbie Capshaw said: ?It would make it much bigger than we would want to see for a primary school. The school has over 500 pupils already, which is very big for Devon.? The county council will be inviting bids from promoters of the new primary school in early December. The county may bid to run a community school, but other interested parties may wish to establish a particular type of school such as a voluntary-aided or church school or foundation or trust school. Parents worried about the building timetable were informed that Moretonhampstead?s new school was built in one year. ?It is bordering on the impossible but we are going to make it work,? said schools building officer Andy Dexter.