EDUCATION chiefs have been accused of “an appalling lack of planning” as they hunt to find a site for a new school in the city.

Southampton’s Conservative party leader councillor Jeremy Moulton has criticised Southampton City Council, saying it has not addressed the issue of growing pupils numbers quickly enough.

As previously reported, councillors have started a consultation process with head teachers to see which schools can expand and are scouring the city for a suitable site for what will be a new multi-million pound secondary school.

But it has to be built by the mid 2020s, when there will be an extra 1,700 pupils of secondary school age.

Councillor Jeremy Moulton, who was cabinet member for children’s services six years ago, said he was aware of the need to plan for a new secondary school then.

He has accused city councillors of planning the new school too late.

He said education chiefs should have already consulted with head teachers and parents and already agreed on where the new school should be located.

It should have all been sorted “ages ago”, he has argued.

Cllr Moulton, pictured, said: “It’s pretty involved. You have to find out which are the popular schools, which are oversubscribed, which have got the space to expand and where do parents want to send their children.

“To say we are looking for a site, it’s so late in the day.

“We need to go through the planning process. It will cost around £17million and more if they don’t have the land.”

But Southampton’s Labour education chief Cllr Darren Paffey said the claims were “nonsense”.

He added: “Now is fine in terms of timings and we have a clear plan. It begins with a consultation so that is what we are doing. It’s quite a while since the city trusted Cllr Moulton to run the schools so he may just have forgotten how these things work.”

As reported it is understood the new school will be built either in the west or the centre of the city.