EDUCATION chiefs have said a new "super school" is unlikely to be built if they lose a public inquiry into the plans.

County Council bosses want to compulsorily purchase land at Towneley Playing Fields for Unity College as part of the £250m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme.

But on the first day of a four-day public inquiry into the compulsory purchase order, the boss of the BSF Project in Lancashire said failure to get the order confirmed would mean the school would not be built.

Janet Newton told government inspector Jonathan King that failure would mean they could not complete the plans until 2012.

This would be outside the Government's first wave of BSF and would mean the council would not qualify for the case to build the school.

That would leave the county council needing to find £8.5m from its own funds to build the new school, which is cash it does not have.

Mrs Newton said: "If we are not successful we will have to look at the existing school. We would not be able to complete our spend until 2012, outside the first wave.

"The financial implica-tions would be in the order of £8.5m. The county council does not have that additional money and we would have to look at refurbishing the existing school."

Dozens of people turned up at Burnley Town Hall for the first day of the inquiry and many were turned away. The inquiry inspector slammed Burnley Council for failing to allow people into the inquiry.

Mr King said: "A number of people have been turned away by town hall staff. I find that to be unacceptable. The whole point is this takes place in public without restriction on access.

"It is people's democratic right to hear what goes on and to speak so that I can pass that on to the Secretary of State.

"I have had words with the town hall management and pointed out that this must not happen again in the strongest possible terms."

The inquiry, which is expected to last until Friday, was called because of the compulsory purchase order and because the council had refused to swap land needed by Lancashire County Council for the new school.