A school in Rickmansworth will undergo a complete transformation after council chiefs approved redevelopment plans.

Additional classrooms, a new dining room, music hall and library will all be created at the Sarratt Road School.

However, the architects, Dinwiddie MacLaren Architects, are insisting the school will remain open throughout the construction- which is expected to take between three and five years.

A new amphitheatre will also be created near the new music hall and designers want to maximise space outside classrooms and will install shelters around the school yard.

Three Rivers District Council gave the plans, which have been dubbed "York House project 2020", the go-ahead at the end of February.

James Dinwiddie, lead architect for the project at York House School, said: "We are delighted to get planning permission. It is a complex process getting permission on Green Belt land on a listed building.

"We have kept the height of the new buildings to single storey so that the main the house, which is a three-storey building, will always be the dominating architecture feature.

"I think it will be transforming- there will be better space for the school’s subjects, including technology, music and art.

"Hopefully, when everything is completed, it will be a much better range of buildings that will add to the grade 2 listed building."

Mr Dinwiddie added: "We are removing the timber-framed buildings, which are at the heart of the school, and therefore the most difficult ones to take out.

"All of it has to be done while the school remains in operation. But we are going to do is provide the school with new buildings, a music hall, a performance hall and upgrade the changing rooms for the swimming pool, as well as refurbishing the pool and build a new dining hall, which are right at the heart of the school, behind the old house."