A PROPOSAL dubbed Radcliffe's "last chance" for a secondary school has stalled.

It was revealed earlier this year that a charity was planning to open a free school for 11 to 16-year-olds in the town by September 2017.

The charity behind the proposals, Chapel St, said at the time that it was hoping to be given the green light to move ahead with the scheme by the end of this September.

However, progress on the application has come to a halt and the Government is yet to even assess the application to decide whether it is viable.

Radcliffe has been without a secondary school since the last pupils left the former Radcliffe Riverside School in 2014, and politicians labelled Chapel St's bid as a generation of children's best hope to go to high school in their hometown.

David Brown, chief executive of the Chapel St Schools Trust, told the Radcliffe Times that the charity remains "very interested" in moving forward with the project and expects progress in the coming months.

He said: "We are still very interested, with our local partners, in establishing a new secondary school in Radcliffe. However, it has not been possible to progress our application on the timescale we had hoped.

"I would expect this to progress in a few months time and then be for the Department for Education to decide in their usual process."

Chapel St already runs similar free schools, which are funded by the Government but not controlled by local councils, in Atherton and Burnley.

No specific location had been formally identified for the proposed Radcliffe school, but the former East Lancashire Paper Mill and Radcliffe Riverside sites were thought to be potential options.

Ivan Lewis, MP for Bury South, has previously called the lack of secondary education in Radcliffe “the biggest scandal of my political career” and was among the prominent local politicians who lent his support to the new plans in February.

Hundreds of residents also took part in a survey put out by the charity to demonstrate the demand for a new school in the town, with Chapel St representatives saying they were "very happy" with the public response.

Mr Lewis said: "It is outrageous that a town the size of Radcliffe has been left without a secondary school for so long.

"I will do everything in my power to ensure that the application that Chapel St made is resubmitted to the Department for Education as soon as possible and will lobby the Government in relation to ensuring any application is successful.

"I am pleased that Bury Council is fully supportive of the application and thank Chapel St for the work done to date."

Cllr Rishi Shori, leader of Bury Council, added: "We are obviously disappointed that progress on the application has not been made in accordance with the original time scale of the end of September.

"However, I am pleased that this seems to be only a temporary delay and that Chapel St are still committed to building a secondary school in Radcliffe and, of course, so is the Council."

Radcliffe had first been promised a new high school following the amalgamation of Radcliffe and Coney Green High Schools in 2003, and it was expected that a new state-of-the-art home for Radcliffe Riverside would open on the paper mill site by 2007.

However, those plans were dropped in 2008 after Bury's Conservative-led council decided to instead close the Radcliffe school and build a new Derby High School on the mill site.

After Labour took control of the council in 2012, it was announced that Derby High would stay at its current site and receive a £1.2 million sports hall.

Mr Lewis and Cllr Shori led a campaign in 2009 to save the town's last secondary school from closure, marching from Radcliffe to the Town Hall and taking the issue to Parliament.