A top school in Watford will need more money from the council, if it is to continue to offer additional school places.

For the past two years Watford Grammar School for Girls – which is partly selective – has been able to take 30 more new students.

But now they have warned that they don’t have the space to keep taking so many.

The county council has drawn up plans to invest in new building at the school, which has academy status.

Today, Hertfordshire County Council's cabinet will determine whether it can go ahead.

According to the council, around £379,000 of the costs would come from unspent Section 106 monies. These are funds from developers that have been allocated to the Watford area as part of planning conditions.

Council papers do not make public the level of the remaining capital costs or exactly how they would be met.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s Education, Libraries and Localism cabinet panel on Wednesday – which backed the plans – head of school planning Pauline Davis outlined the need.

“Watford Grammar School for Girls has been able to take an extra 30 pupils for two years, which has been useful in meeting demand for secondary school places in that locality,” she said.

“It has been able to do that as a consequence of a successful bid for expansion of sixth form facilities which freed up a little accommodation.

“It cannot sustain that level of places in the future, so we have been talking about how they can sustain those places because they are needed.”

Conservative councillor Annie Brewster welcomed the way “little bits” of Section 106 money were being added up “to make something substantial for such a good school”.

But there were some concerns raised at the cabinet panel, in light of the selective criteria used for part of the school’s intake and the school’s practice of including children from out of the county.

Liberal Democrat councillor Nick Hollinghurst said it was “generous” of the county to be supporting a selective academy in this way.

Labour councillor Asif Khan – who attended the Watford Grammar School for Boys – said the school offered “exceptional education”. And he said there was a need to expand schools and exceptional schools.

However he pointed to the school as a selective school and as a school that took pupils from outside of Hertfordshire, who were “taking up places that Watford children could benefit from”.

“It is a big chunk of money coming in from the county council,” said Cllr Khan. “I do think the school has a moral obligation to open up these places to Watford or even Hertfordshire children.”

The panel heard that a number of schools in the Watford area had academy status and had their own admissions criteria – which the council could not do much about.

Developers agree to pay ‘Section 106’ monies to councils as part of planning conditions to meet  particular social, community or infrastructure needs that arise as a result of their development.