Improvement work at four Mitcham schools will be cancelled or scaled down as Merton struggles to deal with rocketing demand for primary places.

Last week a £240m Government grant to help local authorities build more schools gave nothing to Merton - sparking threats of legal action from Merton Council to try and get the decision reversed.

Funding is needed for 360 more primary pupils a year by 2012, mainly in the west of the borough, and this week a council report said temporary classrooms at current schools would meet the demand in the short term.

It also said the council’s preferred option of building a new school in north Wimbledon was unaffordable at the moment.

Planned improvements at Links, St Mark’s, and Peter and Paul primary schools will be postponed, and a scheme at Garden primary will be “reduced considerably”, with the cash chanelled into funding new classrooms.

Some work at St Ann’s special school in Morden will also be delayed.

Vicky Staite, a parent at St Mark’s primary in St Mark’s Road, said: “I think it is really bad to stop the development of our school to help another. Money should be coming here, not an area that’s more upmarket like Wimbledon.”

St Mark’s parent governor Neil Malcolm said the school had been expecting to improve its corridors and hallways, which were narrow and “downright dangerous”.

Councillor Krystal Miller, assistant cabinet member for schools, admitted the primaries affected were some of the borough’s most deprived and parents would feel “let down” by the news.

But she said the Government had told the council to switch the funding to tackle the places crisis - and condemned the Government’s decision not to release any cash for Merton when neighbouring Kingston, Wandsworth, Lambeth and Croydon were each given millions for new schools last week.

She said: “It’s not a small challenge were facing, and the Government hasn’t really recognised that.”

Six schools have already expanded to meet rising demand in the past two years - a number “just sufficient” to deal with this year’s intake, according to the report.

Officers claimed a new primary in north Wimbledon must be “an aspiration rather than a commitment”. Coun Miller said she was determined to find funding for the new school.

Labour councillor Maxi Martin said: “We have known about the increase for some time, and this administration should have been putting money aside.”

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