WILTSHIRE County Council has applied for planning permission to build an extension to Wansdyke Primary School in Devizes, even though other schools in the town are under threat because of empty classes.

Kennet District Council received plans this week for three more classrooms at the school and the removal of a mobile classroom. A new playground area is also part of the £300,000 scheme.

A supporting letter from the county education department said the school is due to expand beyond its current capacity of 260 pupils by next year, and pupil numbers are expected to rise to 278 by 2007.

This is in marked contrast to St Peter's Primary School on Bath Road, which has seen its school roll fall from 179 in 1998 to 117 currently, a recovery from a low of 110.

Southbroom Infants' School on the Green has also seen its school roll fall from 290 to 197 over the last two years and it has been forced to make staff redundant.

The changes in the concentration of young families have been blamed for the imbalance. Most of the building of new homes around the town has been on the south side, off London Road, on the former Roundway Hospital or in the Brickley Lane and Nursteed Road area.

Carol Brewer, vice chairman of the board of governors at Wansdyke School, said: "Wansdyke has always been a popular school and we are now bursting at the seams. We desperately need this new space. We will have three new classrooms and be getting rid of an old mobile classroom, so it will be a much more pleasant place for both the children and the staff to work."

Wansdyke has enjoyed good reports from the schools' inspectorate Ofsted, but so have St Peter's and Southbroom Infants' schools.

Despite being less than half a mile apart, there has been no suggestion from county that the overflow from Wansdyke should be directed to St Peter's or Southbroom.

A spokesman for the county council said: "The planning application is for two replacement classrooms for mobile classrooms, and a further classroom to expand capacity at the school to cater for children from new housing developments nearby.

"The county council's policy is to provide school places as near to children's homes as possible and to encourage them to walk or cycle to school.

"The money for the building work at Wansdyke School has come partly from the New Deal for Schools fund and partly from developer contributions."

As housing development increases along London Road, there is likely to be a new school built close to the proposed development beside Quakers Walk.

Governors at St Peter's School have indicated their preference to be moved to that site when and if it is built.

They say they have been left with no alternative but to apply to close the school in Bath Road and move to the new site, if it is to be built.

They can foresee no future for the Victorian building if the new school is built at Quakers Walk, as it will erode their catchment area even further.

Wiltshire County Council sent out a consultation paper to parents, local councils, pre-schools and nurseries in the area earlier this year to find out how they felt about the possible move.

The overwhelming majority approved the move as the only way of saving the school and preserving jobs for teachers.

The paper noted that proposed new houses being built in Devizes in the next seven years will require an extra 413 primary places. Taking into consideration the spare capacity at St Peter's and Southbroom Infants, there is still a shortfall and a new school at Quakers Walk would be essential.

Town and district councillor Ray Taylor said that population changes had to be taken into consideration when talking about the future of schools in the town.

He said: "You have to take the Quakers Walk site into consideration. Some rationalisation is going on."

Wansdyke Primary School was built in 1975 to service the new estate that had been built on land off Wick Lane.

It underwent some building work last year when £100,000 of New Deal for Schools money was spent on providing a new IT suite with 32 computers. Purpose-built prefabricated buildings were lifted in by crane.

The school hopes the extension will cope with the rise in pupil numbers from homes on the Roundway site.