A £40 MILLION programme to meet the soaring demand for primary school places across North Yorkshire has been agreed as education bosses battle to address the imbalance between village and town schools.

A dramatic increase in numbers of primary school children, particularly in market towns, means North Yorkshire County Council has to increase places by 1,700 in the next three years and 3,200 in the next five years.

While many rural schools have too many places, a lot of urban areas have serious shortfalls.

The government has given the county council a special budget of £40m to tackle the situation. Problems centre around the main towns including Harrogate and Scarborough, but Northallerton, Bedale, Sowerby ,Thirsk and Catterick Garrison have also been highlighted, because of new housing developments.

Suzanne Firth, manager for children and young people’s services, said: "The growing shortfall of places in some areas will require significant capital investment and a primary school expansion programme on a scale not seen in North Yorkshire in many years.”

In Northallerton new housing means additional places will have to be provided short term, with a new primary school needed longer term. In Bedale residential development means expansion of the primary school is being considered.

Ms Firth said: "In the wider Bedale rural area there are village primary schools with falling rolls. Geography and travel distances make it difficult for one to offset the other."

The 900-home Sowerby Gateway development at Thirsk means the council will need to expand one or more schools or create a whole new facility to meet demand by September 2018.

She said the situation at Catterick Garrison is particularly difficult because the MoD has plans to make significant changes.

“This could create a net increase of between 100 to 400 additional children with significant moves in and out, this has the potential to create major volatility in the school population in this area,” added Ms Firth.

An extra 900 places were created last year and 230 more this year to meet the most pressing demand.

Individual schools are being consulted to work out how places can be created.

Cllr Chris Metcalfe called for the council to work with district councils to consider the wider issues of education.

He said: “Housing developments are being focused very much on the market towns, what we have is the issue of falling roles in village schools, if we don’t tackle some of these problems, people will come back and say I have a village school and it’s unsustainable.”