Critics claim the plans jeopardise the look of the conservation area, and will choke streets with traffic

A new, temporary school will be built on the edge of a conservation area – despite concerns from angry residents that it will choke the streets with traffic.

Brent Council approved the two-storey development containing 20 classrooms, in the grounds of Kingsbury High School Bacon Lane, where some students from the special needs Village School will be taught from this September while their own school is being rebuilt.

But the plans have proved controversial with residents, who claim the modernist design of the building will spoil the look of the area, and the increased traffic it will attract will be ‘unsafe’.

Nine minibuses are expected to ferry children to and form the school during the week.

Deborah Nyman, of the Roe Green residents association, said: “We are all for the rebuild of the Village School, but we feel that the traffic strategy is unworkable and will prove to be unsafe and dangerous.

“What’s more, residents in Stubbs Close hadn’t even been properly consulted by the council. It is a disgrace.”

Speaking against the proposals, Julia Day, who lives near the site in Stubbs Close, said: “We were never consulted regarding the plans for this building, which will be built very near us.”

Regarding Roe Green’s nursery, in Bacon Lane, she added: “We understand that a convoy of buses are going to come up Bacon lane five days a week, and this is going to be a big problem for the nursery. Roe Green is already jammed in the mornings.”

Roe Green Village comprises of nearly 300 houses and flats built between 1918 and 1920 as a garden village estate for airplane manufacturing workers.

It is classified as a conservation area, meaning that there are strict planning regulations which restrict development in order to protect this historical heritage.

The controversial development comes shortly after the headmaster at Kingsbury High School wrote to parents informing them of proposals to build 12 new football pitches on the school playground, raising the prospect of two major building projects going on simultaneously in the quiet, corner of the borough.

Kay Lane, headteacher at The Village School, said that while she sympathised with residents’ concerns, the building is crucial to enable ‘desperately needed’ re-build of The Village School to go ahead.

Talking about the dilapidated state of he current school building, she said: “Each day the leadership team has to make decisions about which area of the school needs the radiators the most.

“I am now of the view that come September I may be saying that we cannot open the building safely and that our 200 pupils will have no where to go.”

Council chiefs did agree to look again at the traffic management around the site.

The temporary school will open in April and teach up to 210 pupils for the next two to three years.