Plans to shut a popular village school following a million-pound investment in new buildings has been branded an "abominable waste of money''.

Governors, staff and parents at Baildon's Hoyle Court Primary School have launched a campaign to save it from the axe.

They say closure of the school would devastate the community.

The Telegraph & Argus revealed on Tuesday how Bradford Council is proposing to shut Hoyle Court, along with six other district schools, in July 2004, claiming there are too many surplus places and the schools are too costly to run.

But over the past couple of years more than £1 million has been spent on providing new classrooms, roofing and an IT suite to enable Hoyle Court to cope with Bradford's switch to a two-tier education system. And as news of the proposed closure was announced building work continued on a new reception class, due to open in September at a cost of £85,000.

LEA governor Miranda Vasey said: "It would be an abominable waste of public money to go and close it after all that investment.''

She said before the re-organisation Baildon had nine schools - six first, two middle and one secondary - but if the latest proposals are implemented it would be left with only four, including just three primary schools

She added: "We got a glowing Ofsted report and were in the top ten primary schools in Bradford for last year's SAT results. Shutting it would devastate the whole community. We're launching a petition. We plan to have banners and posters and are holding a meeting for parents at the school at 9.15am tomorrow.

"We'll be questionning the LEA's information on pupil figures. We think at a time when so many new family homes are being built in Baildon we should be keeping schools open in the village rather than closing them. There are alternatives - one would be to slim down other schools that aren't full by reducing the number of forms of entry.''

Hoyle Court's chairman of governors Michael Heaton said: "It's clearly negligence to even consider closing the school when the LEA has spent very large sums of public money initially re-roofing the entire building and more recently providing much-needed additional accommodation, including three extra classrooms and a larger office and staff room.

"I feel this school's being sacrificed in the interests of other hidden agendas.''

Councillor David Ward, Bradford's executive member for education, said: "They've some valid points and that's why we've got two long and separate consultation periods during which we would expect people with local knowledge to send us their contributions.

"It's now time for local communities to look at these proposals and argue the case for the retention of these schools.

"I have to ensure that we reduce the number of surplus places in schools because that has a direct effect on the amount of funding we can give.''