A former school site should be turned into a community asset so it can become the site of a new free primary school.

That’s the view of Cllr Lucy Grieve of Portland Town Council, who is part of a group planning to submit an application for a new free primary school for Underhill, to be called Portland Primary School.

At a meeting of Portland Town Council’s Planning and Highways Advisory Committee at Easton Methodist Church Hall on Wednesday, she will be asking members to nominate the former Brackenbury Infants School site on Portland to be secured as a community asset.

Dorset County Council decided to put up the site for sale back in June and Cllr Grieve has been told the authority is “anxious” to sell the site as soon as possible.

As a result, she will argue to committee members that they must nominate the site to become a community asset fast “otherwise it could be sold before any community group could make a bid.”

She will say that the Portland Primary School group is intending to ask for the land in its application to the Department of Education to create a new primary school in Underhill, adding that there is also a lot of community interest in the site for other uses.

In her statement to be presented to the committee, she writes: “It could be that if we got the school, the site could be hired out for activities after 6pm Monday to Friday and weekends in term-time and at any time in the school holidays.”

The Portland Primary School group is on its way to registering itself as a corporate body, which would allow it to bid for the site regardless, but “this will take time which we don’t have,” according to Cllr Grieve.

She notes that nominating the asset to the county council in this way would not commit the town council to get involved in making a bid to purchase the site itself.

It was revealed that a group was planning to submit an application for a new free primary school in Underhill in June, part motivated by the fact that from September there will be no primary provision for children in years one to six in the area.

The free school group is made up of educationalists, business managers and community representatives.