A primary school space crisis has left every school in south Lambeth completely full for the fifth consecutive year.
Critics say the situation - which means no-one moving to Streatham, West Norwood, Tulse Hill, Gipsy Hill, or Clapham in the coming year will be able to go to a local Lambeth school - shows the council is failing to act quickly enough to deal with a worsening problem.
Many parents from the area also missed out on a place for their children at one of the three preferred schools listed on their application forms this September.
Lib Dem opposition spokesman on schools, Councillor Roger Giess, said parents were “fed-up” with a situation which repeated itself year-on-year and was only partly fixed with temporary solutions.
He said: “Lambeth Council has known about this growing problem for years. It has had all this time to find a site for a new primary school but it has still failed to do so.”
He said a “perfectly suitable” school site was available on the Magdalen Estate in Drewstead Road, Streatham Hill, but the council had not acted to use it quick enough.
West Norwood is considered by the council to be the area most in need of a new primary school, but a suitable site has yet to be found.
A council spokesman said it was working hard to provide more school places, but the shortage was a London-wide issue and not just exclusive to Lambeth.
He also said the council was looking for a location to build a new school in the south of the borough.
Local population shifts and changes in the birth rate have pushed up demand beyond the capacity of schools in some areas, while a lack of space has made building new schools difficult.
Some 90 additional spaces were created in the past two years in schools in Streatham and Norwood to try and ease the pressure.
Close to 150 extra spaces are being provided in five schools in the area for September, but this has still failed to satisfy demand.
The spokesman said every child had a primary school place for September and said “a great deal of work” had been done to develop plans to expand primary school provision.
He added: “In south Lambeth, we have agreed proposals to expand Kingswood School, recently judged Outstanding by Ofsted, to create new primary school provision at the Woodfield Centre and, dependent upon confirmation of additional funding from the Government, to rebuild and expand Julian’s School.”
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