WORRIED residents packed into a public meeting to voice their fears over plans to build a new St Wilfrid's secondary school on Feniscliffe playing fields.

Objectors say there will be nowhere for children to play, and a new school would lead to traffic chaos.

They are also angry about the system which allowed the land, formerly owned by Blackburn Council, to be passed to Lancashire County Council and then to the grant-maintained school. Action group chairman and a former St Wilfrid's governor Frank Baxendale, stressed protesters came from a wide area, and were not just people living immediately next to the fields.

"There was unanimous support for the action group, which has been working on behalf of residents.

"Residents accept that St Wilfrid's needs a single-site school, and they want to encourage the investment in education in the town, but this is the wrong site.

"Councillors Malcolm Doherty and Ashley Whalley attended the meeting and we asked for the borough council to work with the school to find an alternative and suitable site."

Plans were formally lodged with Blackburn Council this week and the action group plans a large turnout when the planning and highways committee discusses the issue.

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