A SCHOOL is planning to launch a £1million charity appeal as part of a fresh bid to rebuild its crumbling buildings.

Bosses at Blackburn's St Wilfrid's Church of England High School have spent more than six years trying to solve the problem of replacing buildings which have been labelled a health hazard.

The latest solution would cost at least £10million and is set to be officially launched this spring.

St Wilfrid's is currently split between two sites and the school buildings were labelled a "health hazard" in an Ofsted report last March.

And a series of schemes designed to solve the long-running accommodation crisis have all failed in recent years.

A move to a playing field in Feniscliffe was scuppered after local residents mounted an opposition campaign.

Plans to move out of the borough to neighbouring Hyndburn were dropped because the scheme was labelled too expensive and ambitious.

The latest blow came after a proposal to fund a rebuilding project with a mixture of private and public money under the Private Finance Initiative foundered.

A bid was put together under the PFI scheme but was rejected by the Government last year even though £200,000 had already been spent on a feasibility study.

The latest set of plans will mean the existing buildings would be demolished and replaced by a purpose-built school, if the scheme gets the go-ahead. St Wilfrid's is currently a voluntary aided school and the governors would have to find at least 15 per cent of the final cost of the project.

The proposals have already won the backing of the local education authority Blackburn with Darwen Council.

A formal bid for funding will also go to the Department For Education and Employment and the whole process is likely to take several years to complete.

Headteacher Linda Robinson, who will be leaving St Wilfrid's at the end of the current year because of illness, said: "A bid will eventually go to the DFEE and if it is to be taken seriously the school will have to raise around 15 per cent of the cost of the scheme.

"We have been speaking to people in the diocese and will be launching the appeal this May."

Mrs Robinson added: "We are looking to stay at the site and at the very least the appeal will have to raise will be £1million but the final total could be a lot more.

"We are starting to put parents and the local churches on alert what the plans for the school are and the fact we will be launching the appeal. One thing I will say is that the local education authority and the local diocese have both been very supportive."

Peter Morgan, assistant director of education and training at Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: "We will be working with the school governors over the next two years to develop a new private/public partnership in order to seek approval for a new building for the school."

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