A NEW secondary school in Oldham with 1,500 pupils has been given the green light by the town hall despite concerns it would cause "traffic chaos".

Oasis Academy Leesbrook has been granted permission to build a permanent base in the town.

The first intake of pupils have been attending the school since September, which currently operates from temporary accommodation on Middleton Road.

A two and four-storey building which would become its new home will be constructed on the site of the former Breeze Hill School, which was demolished in 2013.

It would provide places for 1,500 pupils aged between 11 to 16 – almost twice as many as Breeze Hill.

Objectors, 12 of which had written to the council, said they had concerns about the extra number of pupils, and the impact on the local roads around the new school.

The council’s planning committee heard that a traffic management system would be put in place to help ease parking problems, which "every school in the land" faces as part of "modern life".

A drop-off area for vehicles would use the existing Breeze Hill Road and Roxbury Avenue junction.

There would be 116 spaces for staff and visitor car parking, as well as a sports pitch, a playground and multi-use games area.

The new school would primarily serve residents from Clarksfield, Roundthorn, Glodwick, Lees, Holt, and Alt.

Objector Patricia Slinger said: “People will say there was a school there before with the same access roads – yes, but then there were 800 pupils.

“When Breeze Hill was open, houses on Roxbury Avenue often had cars blocking and sometimes parking on their drive.

“It didn’t matter whatever anybody said to the drivers, this was happening every day.

“Imagine the chaos that the traffic is going to cause when the school is built.

“If the planning committee does not change the proposed access, a lot of people will be saying ‘I told you so’.”

Anne Hargreaves, planning consultant for Galliford Try Partnerships North West, the contractor selected to build the school, said the academy trust had a strong network of schools within Oldham and the North "west.

“They’ve specifically expressed a vision to deliver exceptional education at the heart of the community,” she said.

“There is a real need for new secondary school places in the east Oldham area to increase capacity for a growing population and offer parental choice.

“There is still much work to be done to ensure community cohesion and diversity in schools.”

A new signal controlled junction at Breeze Hill and Lees Road would solve the capacity issues, Ms Hargreaves told the panel.

But Chadderton North Cllr Barbara Brownridge said: “Any of us who’ve got schools anywhere near us know they’re a nightmare in the morning.

“So my concern is that there are 184 staff, and only 116 car parking spaces.

“I appreciate what the applicant has said about the drop-off zone, but parents don’t use the drop-off zone, we know they don’t, particularly if you have to queue to get out of the site.”

Highways officer Wendy Moorhouse said the staff would use a "stacking" system during the day to maximise car parking space.

Committee chair Cllr Steven Bashforth added that every school had the same issues around pick-up and drop-off times.

“There are hundreds of schools where if we could solve the parking problems we would do, but we can’t because people are people and people like using cars,” he said.

“We’re all guilty of this in one way or another, it’s modern life.”

Saddleworth South Cllr John Hudson said: “I’ve often been a believer that teachers, like pupils, should walk a bit more because they’d live a bit longer because they’d be a bit fitter.

“But that isn’t the world in which we live, they’d park in the front room if they could.

“Every school in the land wherever you go is undergoing problems with dropping off and picking up times because of people’s inability to let children walk places.”

He added: “It’s up to us to tell these developers when they build new schools, we want more spaces.”

A traffic management plan will be further negotiated between the council and the applicant to help mitigate parking problems around the site.

The case officer said there would be a parking management plan put in place, and a school safety zone introduced.

The uptake of places would be staged over a period of five years where pupils would be ‘decanted’ from the existing school on Middleton Road and into newly formed year groups.

The application was approved unanimously.