AN MP has been criticised for claiming campaigners are costing school children books and computers by fighting plans for a £26m academy.

Pat Glass, Labour MP for North-West Durham, said a judicial review of Durham County Council’s plans to build a Consett academy on the town’s Belle Vue playing fields, secured by opponents of the proposals, would delay the school’s opening and cost more than £100,000 which could be spent on books, computers, desks and chairs for pupils.

But Owen Temple, Liberal Democrat councillor for Consett North, said: "I fully understand the concerns of children, parents and grandchildren.

"Their futures should never have been put in jeopardy as they have been by the council’s obsessive drive to build on Belle Vue regardless of local opinion.

"There’s something fundamentally wrong, however, when people who have been ignored by the county council... are asked to get behind it ‘for the sake of the children’."

Consett Academy replaced Moorside Community Technology College and Consett Sports Community College earlier this month but opened in the old schools’ buildings.

Council chiefs hope a new Belle Vue campus will open in 2014. The judicial review is expected within months.