A MULTI-MILLION pound primary school building for Raglan has been given the go ahead.

Monmouthshire councillors unanimously agreed yesterday to grant planning permission for the £4.5m project on the Brooks Holding site off Station Road, which is expected to open in September 2015.

The new building, which will be jointly funded by the Welsh Government and the council, will replace the school’s current infant and junior buildings on land to the east of Barton Brook.

The new school will provide places for 210 pupils and will make up part of the authority’s 21st Century Schools programme, which encourages primary schools to educate all pupils under one roof.

But a delegated panel will look into arrangements for the school’s northern hall wall over concerns of the impact it might have on a resident who lives adjacent to the site.

The council’s planning committee’s chairwoman Cllr Ruth Edwards said she was keen the plan got the green light.

She said: “It makes me very envious and very, very old – it’s not the school I attended that’s being replaced, but I went to the one before that.”

Originally passed by the committee in November, the plan was taken back there because of a discrepancy between the boundary of the site approved last year and the one now required.

Cllr Roger Harris added: “It has to be big for the activities that go on in a school – we can’t get away from that. We mustn’t forget the facilities will be magnificent. The children in Raglan won’t know how lucky they are until they get inside.”

The old infant school building will be demolished and surrounding land will be developed for a car park and the junior school building will be handed over to the council’s estates department. Currently the buildings suffer poor energy and high maintenance levels.

The council has said previously that the new school will offer facilities similar to Caldicot’s Dewstow Primary School.