PLANNERS are going back to a school where locals fear extensions will bring problems.

They'll take a close look at Boothstown's Highfield Special School before deciding whether to approve extension plans.

Members of Salford planning committee are to visit the former Home Lea site at the corner of the East Lancs Road and Mosley Common Road at Boothstown.

Wigan Council wants to extend the school - for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties - to provide extra live-in accommodation facilities.

But after considering locals' concerns about four key issues and planning officers' guidance Salford councillors decided on the visit.

The aim is to increase the number of children sleeping there Monday to Thursday from 12 to 32. The overall 40 pupil total, including non-residential, would remain unchanged.

Staff numbers would increase by four, two of them residential. But planning officers believe fears of more traffic creating congestion are unfounded since pupils would be dropped off and collected from school by taxis.

And they say extra sports facilities would be beneficial and the development would still leave ample open space.

Objectors claim pupils at the existing school "steal milk from doorsteps, throw bricks at residents' windows and are abusive and a nuisance".

New look Highfield is needed because of a special school shake-up.

Buildings at RoseHill at Hindley and Highfield (Mosley Common) are going. Some will go to Rose Hill new venture (Tyldesley Primary School which is moving to a new site at Ennerdale Road).

Pupils will go there and to renamed Home Lea which falls within Salford boundary and takes kids from Salford and Wigan.

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