New school and nursery approved for new town

A new school and nursery with places for more than 700 children has been given the go-ahead by planners.

The primary school on the edge of Cranbrook, a new town near Exeter, Devon, is due to have space for 630 pupils, with 80 nursery places available.

The site, Cobdens Primary School, would also have a grass sports field and an all-weather floodlit artificial pitch that would be available for community use, scheme proposers said.

Officers at East Devon District Council had expressed concern about the landscaping around the site and the appearance of the building, but amendments to the plans led to it being fully approved.

Building first started in Cranbrook in 2011 and the town has a planned population of about 20,000 people.

The planning report for the school, to the north of London Road, said the site formed "a critical part of the infrastructure that is necessary to support the Cranbrook expansion".

Planning officers said the appearance of the site had "improved markedly" from previous plans put forward by Devon County Council, with a "monotonous rhythm" now "broken and given a coherence" by changes to the materials.

The school had previously been given outline planning permission as it formed part of plans for more than 1,400 homes that were approved in 2024.

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