Parents have accused a senior councillor of hypocrisy after she gave the go-ahead to plans to merge two schools to create a 600-pupil “super-primary”.

The angry backlash followed Brighton and Hove City Councillor Vanessa Brown’s decision yesterday to ignore protests against a scheme to join St Luke’s Junior and St Luke’s Infant schools in the Queen’s Park area of Brighton.

Coun Brown, deputy council leader and cabinet member responsible for the city’s schools, gave the provisional go-ahead to the plans at a meeting at Hove Town Hall, triggering a legally required consultation period.

Parents from St Luke’s Infant school, which is rated outstanding by Ofsted, accused her of going against her own opinions.

They pointed out that when she and the Conservative party had been in opposition in the city she had applauded a decision not to merge two other similarly high-achieving schools.

They said on another occasion she had been highly critical of the botched move to create Goldstone Primary in Hove, which was initially forced to run on split sites. At the time Coun Brown was quoted as saying in future no mergers should go ahead unless the facilities were right.

In a deputation to last night’s meeting on behalf of hundreds of opponents Paul Hendrick, whose son Connor attends St Luke’s Infant, said that situation applied to the St Luke’s schools. He said that although they shared a Victorian building, converting them to one school would be extremely difficult because of its listed status.

Coun Brown said she sympathised with the situation but still believed merging the schools would lead to the best educational outcome for the area.

Mr Hendrick said: “This is supposed to be democracy, our objections have not been answered and our opinions seem to have been ignored. It is crazy to go ahead like this.”

He said the infant school’s governors would be appealing to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator to try to stop the merger.

Coun Brown said she was satisfied the facilities at St Luke’s would be adequate and argued the previous merger bids had been amid different circumstances.

She said: “We have recently spent around £400,000 on improvements there. At the moment the two schools are only separated by one door.

“We will also be considering whether to invest more there if we are successful with bids to the Government for funding under the Primary Capital Programme.”

Councillor Ben Duncan, the Green party’s opposition education spokesman, said: “Merging these schools would mean riding roughshod over the clearly stated preferences of the majority of parents, teachers and pupils.”

The six-week consultation period will begin on January 12. A final decision will be made in March. If the scheme goes ahead the merged school will open next September.