A Shepshed school must expand to be able to take a necessary 100 more pupils a year, the county council has said.

Iveshead School currently has an "approved admission number" of 150 new pupils each year, but this academic year agreed to take 210.

That number is expected to rise again to 240 in the 2025/26 academic year. Due to new housing being built to the west of Loughborough, where 2,440 new homes are set to be delivered by 2028, there is expected to be a large deficit of pupil places if nothing changes, according to Leicestershire County Council.

However, the current school building only has a capacity for 950 pupils and, in September 2023, there were 943 on roll. The county council, which is the local education authority, has submitted a two-phase plan to expand the school.

Phase one would see the existing dance studio and changing rooms converted into general teaching classrooms, the computer suites upgraded and a "food service cabin" installed. Phase two would see a new building constructed on the school grounds.

The two-storey block would include 10 new classrooms, a library, three seminar rooms, a media studies classroom with an audio-visual suite and a post-16 centre, as well as offices, toilets and a staff room. The new building is expected to be located on part of the playing field.

The council said it accepted this was not ideal. However, it added, because the school has been expanded a number of times before, there are "no other locations where anything can be constructed without impacting the existing playing field provision" and the school currently has "a greater amount of playing field than would be the case if this was a new school being built at this location".

The county council's planning department will rule on the application in due course.