Plans to create the new £20 million Workington Academy got the go-ahead this week. 

The county council gave the project the green light at a meeting yesterday after an hour's debate. 

Councillors raised concerns about  traffic, children’s safety and local access.

Highways officers said improvements could not be made to the Park End Road junction with the A66, so the county council and the William Howard Trust, which will run the academy from September, must develop a travel plan within three months of building work starting.

The travel plan – covering the first five years of the academy – must include measures to increase the number of children and staff walking, cycling or using another safe way of getting to schools, possibly buses, to help ease the impact on surrounding major roads.

A survey of pupils and staff must be carried out and CCTV cameras will be installed at key junctions this autumn to monitor traffic numbers and flow.

Workington Academy opens in September after the merger of Stainburn School and Southfield Technology College.

Pupils and staff will work at the Stainburn site while the 1,200-pupil academy building takes shape nearby.

The academy is due to be ready by spring 2017.

Councillor Joe Holliday, who represents St John’s and Great Clifton, led calls for a footpath to be kept alongside the school site as the county council’s development control panel backed the building bid.

He argued the long-established path provides a safe route for children, families and the general public but it has been closed for health and safety reasons while construction takes place.

Fellow Workington county councillor Gerald Humes called on the town council to explore whether it should apply for a public right of way to be granted in recognition of the existing cut-through.

Alan Clark, chairman of the council development control committee, called on the developer to help find a safe path for children and local people in light of the dangers posed by the two major roads to the school site.

He said: “Workington desperately needs a new school. It is bleeding pupils to Keswick and Cockermouth and we need an improvement in education in that area.

“Our planning officers have worked very hard on this application in a short space of time.

"It is not perfect, but we very rarely achieve perfection. They have done the best they can.

“If we can negotiate with the builder anything else on top of the recommendation, I think from a PR point of view they should listen to us.”