PLANS to open Southampton’s first free school have been scrapped for this year after education bosses failed to secure a site for it.

Instead the Hope Community School will open its doors to its first pupils a year later than planned, in September 2017.

Approval had been given for the two-form entry primary school in the heart of the city to welcome its first students in the next academic year beginning this September.

But sponsors of the scheme, the New Generation Schools Trust, have announced that a deal could not be done on purchasing the land where they had hoped to build it.

Project director at NGST Mary Rouse said: “Until recently, both the Department for Education and New Generation Schools Trust believed the acquisition of a site for the school to open this year was close. However, a final offer made by the Education Funding Agency to purchase the preferred site option was rejected by the land owner."

She added that the challenge in Southampton was rising land prices and competition against developers for all available land, which meant the Department for Education was not able to compete financially.”

Now talks are under way to secure a new site which is also within the SO14 postcode area.

However, according to the Trust the sale would not be secured within the timeframe required to secure funding before the offers were sent out for primary places later this month.

Chairman of New Generation Schools Trust, Paul Weston, said: “Because of the long period of time this process has taken, and particularly because of where we are now in the primary school admissions cycle, the Department for Education and the Trust have agreed to defer the opening of the new school to September 2017.

“Although we realise this will be disappointing for many of the school’s supporters and we aware of many parents who were depending on the school opening in 2016, we are unable to secure Funding Agreement without a permanent site.

In all, 44 applications for places at Hope Community School had been received, of which 17 were first choices.

Those applications will be disregard by Southampton City Council when they come to allocate places for primary places later this month and second and third choices will effectively be treated as first and second choices so that no child is disadvantaged by the school’s opening deferral.