PARENTS of pupils at a Southampton primary school are angry that they have not got the new state-of-the-art building they say they were promised.

Now Southampton MP John Denham is backing mums and dads of pupils at Harefield Primary, which opened last September after the amalgamation of Harefield Infant and Harefield Junior.

The school's supporters have said that when Southampton City Council agreed to amalgamate the infant and junior schools in May 2005 they promised to create a new primary school by expanding the infant school.

However, pupils at the 315-place school are still being taught on the site of the junior and infant schools.

Mr Denham, who visited the school, said: "Parents are right to be very unhappy. There was a huge campaign against the merger of the two schools two years ago.

"The thing that brought people around to the idea was the promise of a purpose-built school fit for the 21st century.

"There have been further delays and it is a very bad way to treat local people.

"I want to put pressure on the city council to honour the promise they made all that time ago."

Mr Denham said he would be willing to help at a national level by lobbying for funding for the estimated £5m project.

Vice-chairman of governors Lisa Eade, who has two children at the school, said that she felt Harefield had been forgotten after Southampton City Council's "broken promises".

She said: "We were told that building work was due to start in January but we have heard nothing.

"It's very hard to get a whole school ethos when you have two separate buildings.

"The whole school has moved forward academically.

"We don't want to come to a standstill with two buildings that are a ten minute walk from each other."

A Southampton City Council spokesman said the project would be built in two stages.

Work was due to begin in June next year on a children's centre during the first phase.

However the construction of the new school, the second phase, is to begin in January 2009.