A SPECIAL meeting called to decide whether to allow a garden centre to hand over its lease to a planned new Jewish free school was called-off at the eleventh hour yesterday.

Founders of the Etz Chaim school had hoped to secure the handover of the Wyvale Garden Centre site in Daws Lane to start building new facilities.

However, a special cabinet resources committee scheduled for last night to hear the plans was abandoned because of “matters relating to the land transactions and the council's interests therein need further work”.

In order for the site to be used for the school councillors must give permission for a change of use and variations on planning permission to allow floodlights, hours of use and playing music.

Instead the papers will now be sent to the regular committee which is set to meet next Wednesday, March 2.

In a letter to a resident chief executive Nick Walkley said: “Whilst these could have been reported in a supplemental report to the committee tonight, given that the next cabinet resources committee is on March 2 it seems rather more transparent to present the revised information to that Committee following the appropriate publication timescales.”

The school is scheduled to be one of the first free schools to open in September under the Government's plans to give parents more input on their children's education.

In the document set to be looked at last night it says the school would be temporarily housed in the former civil defence building next to the site which is also used by Sea Scouts.

The future of this building is in doubt after the borough archives were moved out of it, with the council potentially looking to sell off the site.