PLANS to develop a new Welsh medium school in Newport are set to be delayed for a year amid ‘uncertainty’ over a land transfer.

The £5.8 million project will see the relocation of Pillgwenlly Primary School to a site on the former Whiteheads steelworks site, off Mendalgief Road in Pill.

The Welsh medium primary is planned to open as a 'seedling' school in the vacant infants' building at Caerleon Lodge Hill, before moving permanently to the current site of Pillgwenlly Primary School.

But the plans, which sought to establish the seedling school from September this year, with Pill primary being relocated from January, 2022, are now facing a delay of one academic year.

However Welsh Government has confirmed that funding “remains secure” for the project.

The project, which will see the number of Welsh medium primary school places across Newport increase by 50 per cent, will now see the seedling school open in September 2021.

Pill primary will be relocated to the new school on the Whiteheads development at the start of the Spring term in 2023.

And the city’s fourth Welsh medium school will move to its permanent site in Pill from September, 2023, under the recommended deferral.

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A council report says the delay is due to planning conditions not having been discharged to allow the scheme to start and the subsequent transfer of the school site.

“Until these issues are resolved the development will be delayed, and therefore there is currently some uncertainty over when this land transfer will occur,” the report says.

“The most recent correspondence indicates that this will not be before December 2020 at the earliest.”

A condition of an approved planning application for the redevelopment of the former steelworks site was for the developer, Tirion Homes, to donate two hectares - almost five acres - of land for the building of a new primary school.

A report, considered by Newport City Council’s cabinet in November, said an agreement for a site has not been achieved.

“The continued delay concerning the planning application will provide a significant risk to the primary school project,” the report said.

Newport council is set to publish a statutory notice of the proposal, if approved as a delegated decision by Cllr Gail Giles, cabinet member for education and skills, next Friday (February 14).