Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has attacked the Conservative run county council for allowing a school admissions black-hole in south west Hertfordshire.

The Sheffield Hallam MP spoke during a visit of Berrygrove Academy this morning, where he came to see the "pupil premium" - additional funding given to schools with disadvantaged children - in action.

His visit to the Fourth Avenue school comes in the same week that Hertfordshire County Council authorised a £30.99 million primary schools expansion programme to help absorb a projected shortfall of places.

Central and Orchard schools will be expanded by 30 pupils, and Oxhey Wood by nine, to help plug deficit of 162 primary places by September 2015.

Mr Clegg said: "You’ve got to anticipate the changes that are likely to happen and what I find very frustrating is that local Liberal Democrats like Dorothy Thornhill were warning the Conservatives at the county council years ago that there would be pressure on school places.

"Instead of planning for that, they were merging and closing schools when they should have been planning for extra places, so they are now having to come up with emergency solutions.

"We [the Government] can set aside money to help increase school places. We’ve spent billions of pounds, and will provide 190,000 extra school places this September.

"We need to work with the county and district councils. Watford Borough Council has been straining every sinew so schools can have the physical places they need."

Mr Clegg said the Department for Education would provide support to areas of the country where the case for help is "well made".

He added: "I certainly think, because of the mistakes of the Conservative county council, there is a real issue of school places here and it’s top of our priorities in the county council elections."

Although a general election will not happen until 2015, the Labour party has already named Matt Turmaine as its prospective parliamentary candidate, and the Liberal Democrats have yet to pick theirs.

Watford Observer:

Deputy Prime Minister meets pupils at Berrygrove.

Mr Clegg was unwilling to throw any light on who the job’s front runners were.

He said: "The last thing I should do as leader is start sticking my oar in to candidate selection, that’s way above my pay grade.

"It’s the local members who decide who they want to put forward as the candidate. I’m not going to start entering into the runners and riders in this one.

"We’ll be making the selection very shortly. We have a strong presence in the town and have done great things under Dorothy Thornhill as mayor. We want to increase our presence in the town."

Watford Observer:

Nick Clegg shows his support for Mayor Thornhill.