THE people of Rawdon have to make a very difficult decision - whether to back the building of a new primary school on a controversial site, or to very possibly lose the chance of the school being built.

With time running out for a decision to be made - to fit in with the Government's Private Finance Initiative timetable - a decision needs to be made before the end of the month on whether a replacement Rawdon Littlemoor Primary School can be built on playing fields off the A65 at Rawdon. A decision has already been deferred and if one is not made before the end of the month, the funding could well go somewhere else.

The school, much of it housed in cramped, Victorian buildings, could be left for many more years. Some 600 people have already signed a petition saying that the proposed site is all wrong; that traffic will be made worse, open space will be lost - and householders backing onto the proposed site will lose their unauthorised extended gardens.

They claim the school could be rebuilt on its own land - but Education Leeds says it has exhausted all other options and claims the proposed site is the only chance the school has of being rebuilt.

Feelings are running high in Rawdon. Everyone wants a new school, but not everyone believes the chosen site is the right one. Rawdon Littlemoor has fought for decades for a new school. It now has a chance of getting one. If the funding is lost this time, it might well be another 20 years before the money is available again.

Harold Best MP was back in his beloved Otley last week to oversee the official start of work on the exciting Courthouse Project.

It is testament to the dedicated, hard work of a group of people in the town that the £750,000 project to convert the former magistrates Court into a community and arts resource centre has finally got off the ground.

Determined to see the project through, those behind it have secured lottery funding and the backing of Otley Town Partnership, the town council and the CIT to get it up and running. It will be a marvellous resource for the town when it opens next spring and one that the community should be grateful for.