WORK on Settle's £1 million primary school is scheduled to start in just over two weeks time, ready to take in pupils from September next year.

The long-awaited school is to be built following the completion of the new Booths supermarket on Bond Lane playing fields.

The store is due to open next month and there has already been a huge recruitment drive to fill the 90 jobs on offer.

Caroline Bird, North Yorkshire County Council's service development manager, said: "We are hoping the work will start in the first week of November and this means we should have the school finished and be opening in September next year as planned, which is clearly very pleasing."

The building contract for the school is to be awarded to Leeds-based Allerton Construction.

Mrs Bird added: "This really is an exciting development as new schools don't come along that often. It means we will have a new school for a new century, which is just great."

Speaking at a meeting of Settle Town Council on Monday, chairman Coun Beth Graham said it was "great news".

Members agreed to ask the county council to ensure the roads were kept clean while the building work was being carried out.

The new school will be slightly larger than the current one and will cater for 180 children - the total number currently attending.

The current primary school, which was built around 1857, suffers from a lack of space, with the nursery being run elsewhere in the town. There is also no on-site playing field.

In contrast, the new six-classroom school will have an associated nursery, playgrounds, staff parking and playing fields.

Headmaster Ian Parker said the school was planning to have an official ceremony when the first sod of soil was cut on the new site.

"Staff and pupils are really excited about things," he said. All we want to do now is get into the school.

"It's only really been the sorting out of the contracts that has been holding us up but now that's been sorted out hopefully everything else will go smoothly."

He said the school would hopefully move items from the old building into the new one next summer.

Mr Parker added: "We're also working very hard with highways to develop and ensure safe routes to school for the children.

"We want children to come to school safely and have been looking at designating routes for the children to follow."

He said the school had also commissioned a local blacksmith to design a weather vane for the roof of the new premises.

Once the children have transferred into their new school, the fate of the old building will lie in the hands of the vicar and churchwardens of the Parish of Settle, which owns the school.

They have been awarded planning permission for the school to be converted into seven homes.