Traffic chaos and the loss of land at Union Corner were among the concerns raised about a Falmouth secondary school’s sports plans this week.

The Packet first revealed Falmouth School’s ambitious plans for a floodlit, all-weather sports pitch, changing pavilion and car park last month.

In order to fund the build, which would see the school buy up the old Budock Hospital site, the sports pitches at Union Corner are earmarked for sale.

These pitches could then be used by housebuilders.

But Alan Shailes, who works for the highways department at Cornwall Council, said at a public meeting held to discuss the plans last Thursday that selling this land would be tantamount to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

The council were “very keen” to cut down on the “severance effect” of roads, Mr Shailes said, adding that the school should not be “hemmed in by it.”

Headteacher Sandra Critchley replied that the school’s analysis suggested the only way to fund the development would be to sell those fields.

Yet she did admit “that would be even better if we could keep that land and carry out the development.”

A father of four from Flushing, who refused to be named, said he was “a bit disappointed” that the purchase of the hospital site would not help “get rid of the chaos that’s outside the school at the moment.”

“We have got three lots of traffic lights and a zebra crossing and it just gets jammed up,” he said. Mrs Critchley said an agreement was already in place with the football club, in a bid to get parents and carers to park there instead of on Trescobeas Road.

She also stressed the fact that nothing in the plans was “fixed in stone. This is just what it could be like,” she said.

Falmouth School will be bidding for the Budock Hospital site when it comes on the market “in the next few months,” Mrs Critchley said.

Housing developers may try to buy the land as well, but its position within the existing school grounds make it best suited for educational use.