CAMPAIGNERS fighting against the development of a super school on a playing field have been denied the chance to present their views at the local council's consultation meeting.

Allan Gray, the leader of the Save the Broomfield Campaign, was outraged to discover that his application to speak to the East Ayrshire Council Cabinet had been denied.

Mr Gray and his group were told that the meeting to be held on Tuesday June 17 as the discussion would be in relation to the educational improvements of the Knockroon Learning and Enterprise development, not the planning issues of where the school will be built.

However, the campaign group have said the have been 'denied a basic right to speak' and feel that the educational considerations put forward by other members of the group have been ignored.

The 32-year-old said: "They have associated me, my comments and the website as the only part of our group, which in actual fact my wife and some of the neighbours have responded from an education perspective as well so they are assuming that I am only going to talk about the building and the location as as the main item and not that I may have some considerations for the education side as well.

"You cannot have two separate meetings on this type of thing because if all you are going to do is ask the parent teach councils 'would you like this fantastic new build school where you can have as many different courses as you can possibly imagine?' What else is going to be said?

"That is the only educational argument.

"They are telling us that local planning is the point were we are allowed to be brought into the fold but that is too late.

"If it goes to the planning stage we are all guns blazing and I know, from my own point of view working for a developer, that it is very hard to turn the wheels back from then."

Members of the campaign group are now in the process of making a formal complaint to ombudsman, after a plea to East Ayrshire Council's head of democratic services, Bill Walkinshaw, to reconsider the group's snub was further denied.

Mr Walkinshaw said: "The Cabinet were of a view that as the petition's proposal as submitted by the Save Broomfield Campaign was more relevant to the planning process therefore in terms of the specific request to make a separate verbal presentation to the Cabinet meeting the Cabinet accordingly agreed to refuse Save Broomfield Campaign's request."

However, Mr Gray says they will not give up the fight.

He added: "Every response we are getting is a closed door.

"I thought about packing it in when I got that response but then I thought about how many other people have thought about that and I know that is what they want me to do so it has only spurred me on."

As previously reported in the Evening Times, Mr Gray has been leading the campaign against the Knockroon development since March.

More than 900 people have signed a petition and the group's Facebook page has gathered more than 1,200 likes because.