A BID to save a historic school building in Pollockshaws has been given a major boost by city chiefs.

Sir John Maxwell School has lain derelict since its closure in 2011, with the possibility of demolition hanging over the facility.

But after a petition gathered 261 signatures, owners Glasgow City Council have now agreed to work with community leaders to try and find a new use for the former school.

Rona Hutcheson, who started the petition, has called on the local authority to look at creating a new business hub within the building.

Speaking to the city’s Community Empowerment Committee, she said: “There is huge support from the local community and beyond. The community wants to see this building saved.

“These messages were expressing dismay at the condition of the building and Glasgow losing part of our built heritage.

“The layout of the building lends itself well to becoming business units. The upper floor could be converted to business spaces and the lower level could include a community space.

“It’s a massive and exciting opportunity to work collaboratively and creatively with the community.”

Councillors backed proposals to work together with Ms Hutcheson and other community representatives.

It came despite Patrick Flynn, the council’s head of regeneration, insisting that there are no parties interested in taking over the site.

He said: “We’ve discussed the building with a number of end users such as nurseries. We haven’t had a sniff from any of the usual suspects.

“We’ve talked to community groups and commercial owners, but we haven’t had the interest because of the major capital funding it would need to bring it up to scratch.”

James Donnelly, project manager at City Property, who are tasked with maintaining the site, added: “City Property do endeavour to maintain the property. There are budgetary constraints. We’re limited to what we can do above keeping the ground floor secure and restricting people from accessing the building.”

Despite those comments, Ken Andrew, chairman of the Community Empowerment Committee, said: I think we have to make every effort to maintain that building given the history of the Maxwell family, what they did for this city and why we named it after them.

“At the very least we could make this building secure and charge any working group that comes of this to find the money to make it wind and watertight and thereafter find a use for it.”

Built in 1907, on a site gifted by landowner, Sir John Maxwell, the school was designed by John Hamilton.

At that time there had been criticism of the design by those who had hoped for it to be built in the Scots Baronial style in keeping with the adjacent Pollokshaws Burgh Hall.

The school had space for 550 pupils and between 1908 and 1915 the political activist John Maclean taught courses in Marxism there.

Following that period, the building became the Sir John Maxwell Primary School, with a Gaelic unit operating there until 1999.

The school was closed in 2011 and has been empty since then, with thieves having stripped it of its original fixtures and features.

It has featured on the council’s ‘Buildings At Risk’ register and was the subject of a failed bid to have it listed in 2016.