WORK has started on a multi-million pound project to build a new primary school for children in Blandford.

The £4m new school will take all the children currently being housed, largely in temporary buildings, at the Archbishop Wake School and is being built on the site of the old St Leonard's Middle School at Black Lane.

Sara Loch, chairman of the governors at Archbishop Wake, said: "It has been two years in the brewing and it is very, very exciting."

The new build is to meet the need for extra space created when north Dorset schools changed from a three-tier first, middle and upper school system to a two-tier primary and secondary system two years ago.

To cope with two extra years within the former first school, temporary buildings had to be put up at the current site at Fairfield Road, where the 275 pupils will continue to be housed until the new school is completed.

The move, from a one-acre site to a 17-acre, will mean a huge amount of extra space for youngsters, with part of the old St Leonard's School being demolished to make way for new buildings and the rest having been refurbished to form a new Children's Centre.

The centre offers a range of activities from music groups to crafts for parents and some of the buildings will also be used for adult education.

The primary school will have enough space to cope with possible future increases in pupil numbers and should be up and running by September next year.

Once the move has taken place, the school at Fairfield Road will be demolished and the land sold off by Dorset County Council, which is funding the building of the new school.