“WE won’t give up the fight.”

So say parents battling moves to close Hampshire’s only specialist school for autistic children.

Earlier this year, the Daily Echo revealed bosses at Hampshire Autistic Society were considering closing Hope Lodge School in Bitterne, Southampton within months because it was losing too much money.

Now, they have given the muchloved facility a stay of execution until summer 2014 amid emotional pleas from parents desperate for their children to avoid the trauma of a change of environment.

The change, subject to a consultation, would see 30 staff cut at the Midanbury Lane-based school, with plans to redeploy many within the society’s operation.

Despite the two-year extension, one parent has branded the move a “smoke screen”. Fears remain there is nowhere else to provide the same level of specialist support for children with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

HAS bosses say they are listening to concerns and nothing has been decided.

But Tim Harpham, a school governor whose 18-yearold son is at Hope Lodge, said: “We won’t give up the fight. I represent the majority of parents’ views on this and the last time we got together, there were some very heated views.

“What the management fails to understand is they are messing with the lives of children with autism. Hope Lodge is brilliant.

Our son has been there since he was 12 and the progress he has made has been astonishing. This will all be lost.”

Blame for the initial closure scheme was placed on a lack of referrals with government policy to include children with specialist needs increasingly within main stream education. On top of that, Hope Lodge was projected to make an “unsustainable” loss of £475,000 this year.

Under revised plans, the 40- year-old school would operate with fewer staff and children.

Chief executive, Andrew Monaghan, said the 2014 extension aimed to help ease the transition for youngsters into further education, such as a proposed “Life Skills College”.

There are also proposals to develop an autism specialist facility in the county, such as a Free School.

Although he has pledged to retain the standard of service on offer at Hope Lodge, he could not rule out the facility closing earlier if pupil numbers then dwindled dramatically.

He told the Daily Echo: “The new proposal shows the society is listening and responding in an informed and sensitive way.”

The consultation period over the revised plan ends on June 6 with the outcome announced on June 22.