MORE than 350 new places are to be created at two Ribble Valley schools as part of a £1.5million plan aimed at ending the area's overcrowding crisis.

Lancashire County Council today revealed that £900,000 will be spent on establishing 220 new places at Ribblesdale High School, Clitheroe and more than £500,000 will go to Bowland High School, Grindleton, to create 132 places, which will come into effect in September 2001.

The county council is also looking for a site in the Ribble Valley to rebuild Bowland High School because any plans to extend the present site would be too limited.

But local campaigners are already asking whether the moves will be enough to end the places problems.

The new school should have the capacity to take 600 pupils, but the provision of more places will go ahead regardless.

The move - aimed at stopping the annual scramble for places at the two popular high schools - will have a knock-on effect for Moorhead High, in Accrington, Norden High, Rishton and Queen's Park High, Blackburn, which have taken 'overspill' children from the Ribble Valley in the past few years.

But the proposals, agreed at a private meeting last week, will not help this year's intake and some pupils could be disappointed as they make their move to secondary education this September. Schools admissions will be announced on Monday.

Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans, who has recently renewed his campaign for more schools places, said: "I obviously welcome the new places, but they are too late. The county council has known about the numbers of people moving into the Ribble Valley for years and, presumably, understood they would have children but made no provision for this. "There is still a need for extra school places for children for this year. We need urgent action or there will still be children being bussed around the county."

North Ribble Valley County Councillor Albert Atkinson, added that the numbers of pupils is steadily rising and is set to increase even more over the next few years as hundreds of homes are being built across the Ribble Valley.

"Are these places enough? I think they have just left it and left it. We have been talking about this for six years, but now they have had to find extra places.

"We need a new school really, because the increase in places at Ribblesdale will mean the school is land-locked. And we could do with a replacement for Bowland somewhere, perhaps in the Whalley area. Surely with the Calderstones hospital development there must be some land there."

The row over places erupted a year ago when families who had put Ribblesdale and Bowland as their first choice were allocated places as far away as Accrington.

And it is expected that Accrington's Moorhead High will offer places to children living outside the catchment area again this year.

Stuart Finch, spokesman for Ribble Valley Schools for Ribble Valley Children, said: "We welcome any moves to increases places in the Ribble Valley, although we feel that it isn't soon enough.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.