THE campaign group battling to keep Hurworth School in its village location last night revealed a new name and a fresh desire to oppose council chiefs.

Dozens of people packed into Hurworth village hall for the latest public meeting aimed at gathering support for the fight to retain the secondary school.

Days after governors voted in favour of supporting plans to move the school to Yarm Road, Darlington, protestors said they would redouble their campaign efforts.

Darlington Borough Council wants Hurworth to take over Eastbourne Comprehensive and the two schools to be brought together in a £20m project.

A new 1,200-pupil school would be built on land near Alderman Tommy Crooks Park.

But the action group last night said the council's actions were disgraceful and insisted that it could still be victorious.

At the meeting, a new name for the group - Save Hurworth and Rural Education (Share) - was adopted.

Group spokesman Ian Holme said: "We're not going to turn nasty, we have no intention of that. We know we're right and we don't need any nasty tactics to get our point of view across."

He called for protestors to attend a full meeting of the borough council tomorrow evening.

Group member and parent Martin Phillips said some of the local authority's behaviour had been disgraceful, but said the town hall had been swamped by demands for details of the plan under the Freedom of Information Act.

"They're having trouble coping with the amount of requests for information, but they should be placing the information in the public domain anyway," he said.

He also insisted that an expanded, 900-pupil Hurworth School in the village would meet all of the council's criteria for helping the future of local education.

"There is an option to build on that site. Take away the rural site and you take away the choice of a rural education," he said.

Mr Phillips said he would be meeting the council's director of children's services, Margaret Asquith, and cabinet member Chris McEwan on Friday to discuss various matters.

The group now wants to enlist the parents from the Eastbourne area.