A TOTAL of £85million has been spent expanding and remodelling Bournemouth primary schools to provide thousands of additional places over the past eight years.

The town has embarked upon the largest school expansion programme since the 1970s in order to cope with a birth rate that has increased by 45 per cent since 2003.

Nearly 4000 additional primary and secondary mainstream school places have been provided or approved - 1,260 of which are at the new Avonwood, Jewell and St Peter's academies.

A report to Bournemouth's cabinet said that since 2010, the council has had to create hundreds of extra primary places every year. This reached a peak in 2014, when an additional 1,140 places were needed.

Of the 39 schools in the area, around 60 percent have received additional money so they can increase their intake.

The report, presented by Cllr Nicola Greene, cabinet member for education, said they had tried to create additional school places in the area's where there was most demand.

But it acknowledges: "The outcome of parental preference inevitably leaves a few schools with the issue of managing low numbers and spare capacity."

This year's primary school place allocation also saw only 82 percent of Bournemouth parents given their first choice of school - one of the lowest rates in the country.

As more and more schools convert to academies, school buildings are gradually being leased to academy trusts and day to day capital funding is now going direct to the academy trusts rather than the council.

The focus is now on providing extra secondary school places and it is currently forecast that between 1,400 and 1,700 further secondary places will be needed over the next decade.

Cabinet members were told that the Bishop of Winchester Academy and Bourne Academy both have room to expand and capacity could be increased at St Peter's School if needed.

"The school estate we've got now is something we can be very proud of," Cllr Nicola Greene, cabinet member for schools told fellow cabinet members.

"Clearly we are ambitious to do more and we're conscious of the challenge coming our way as rising numbers move to secondary school."