A TENBURY school can go ahead with plans for a new building after planning permission was approved.

Tenbury Church of England Primary School, in the town's Bromyard Road, had applied to Malvern Hills District Council for permission to build a new detached single-storey nursery building following the removal of existing mobile classrooms.

The application said the new building would be of timber-framed construction, with horizontal timber weatherboarding and, grey powder-coated aluminium windows, and man-made interlocking slate roofing.

It would include a canopy to provide a covered entrance.

A report submitted by planning officer Karen Wightman recommended approval for the application, noting that while the original school building is typical in appearance of a Victorian school building, new buildings and mobile classrooms had been sited in the school grounds in more recent times.

The office found that the proposed nursery building would be directly to the south of the modern parts of the school and would be relatively screened from the original school building and nearby listed houses.

The replacement of the mobile classrooms was also considered to be an improvement to the overall school and the surrounding area, the report said, while any visual harm caused by the proposed building's appearance would not outweigh the public benefit of ensuring the school could continue to serve local children.

The officer said it was not expected that the new building would cause substantially increased noise levels for locals, as it is replacing a mobile classroom, while it was not considered that the mobile classrooms would be suitable habitat for protected species.

The report noted that the building would be sited in a high risk flood zone 2, but said that, due to the minor scale of the building and the fact that the school would already have flood evacuation measures in place, it was not considered that the plans would exacerbate any flooding risks to human life.

The application was approved, with conditions.