Baginton will not get a faith school

The applicants, Baginton Green Limited, planned to build a single faith school building with 22 spaces for car parking, an area for coach parking, a senior sports/play area, primary play area, a senior soft play area, associated landscaping and perimeter fencing, on land at Bosworth Close, Baginton,

The site was originally part of the grounds of Baginton Hall until it was destroyed by a fire in the 1920s. The following decade saw the extraction of sand and gravel from the site. By the end of the 1950s all of the gravel had been extracted and the site was used as a tip and it then served as a support base for the construction of the nearby A46 dual carriageway.

Since then the site has remained as open uncultivated ground with scrub vegetation.

Baginton Parish Council objected to the plans to build a school on the land on the grounds of inappropriate development in the green belt in the absence of any very special circumstances.

There were also 59 letters of objection from the public and 27 letters of support for the proposal.

Despite supportive comments made by councillors at a planning meeting at Leamington Town Hall on Wednesday evening, who agreed the school would be good for the area by bringing an abandoned site back into use, other members of the committee said the land was still green belt, no matter what its state, and green belt needed protecting.