Parents listened to plans for a new school to accommodate the burgeoning infant population of Manningham in Brad-ford.

At a community meeting yesterday, education chiefs outlined proposals for a new primary school on the site of the former Margaret McMillan First School in Scotchman Road which was recently damaged by fire.

Thirty reception-class pupils are already in place there. If plans are given the go-ahead, a new reception class will join them in September and another by 2003. The site, adjoining St Cuthbert's Primary, will then become a one-form-entry Key Stage One school.

The meeting, at the Heaton Community Centre, heard the proposals were still in their consultation stage but no obj-ections have yet been raised.

Margaret Peel, Bradford Council's Strategic Education Administrator, stressed all the early spaces for the catchment school have been filled.

And she explained that the new school plans, along with the expansion of other primaries in the area, mean 105 new pupil spaces are being created in the next year.

Because of the rising population in the densely-housed inner city, she could not rule out the creation of new schools in the coming years.

There will be an update on the proposals at the next Lilycroft Neighbourhood Forum, which takes place at the Heaton Community Centre (Khalifa Centre) in Farfield Road on September 11 at 7.30pm.