Parents and children will take their case for a purpose-built sports hall at their school to Brighton and Hove Council on Thursday.

They have raised half the money for a sports hall to be built at Blatchington Mill School, Hove and they want the council to fund the rest. But the council says it does not have the extra money.

Headmaster Neil Hunter has warned some sports lessons will have to be cancelled if the new hall is not built by September and fears the health of his students will suffer if the plans are delayed any longer.

Mr Hunter has spoken out for the first time in a bid to break the stalemate over the money he needs for the £510,000 sports hall.

It was originally planned to be a community sports hall as part of ill-fated plans to redevelop the King Alfred Leisure Centre on Hove seafront.

Under the scheme, the school would have received money for the hall which would have replaced sporting facilities at the King Alfred.

But the plan was dropped after the council and developers decided the King Alfred should retain its sports facilities.

The school and parents have raised more than £230,000 towards the cost of the hall and on Thursday they will present a petition to Brighton and Hove Council asking them to provide the rest.

But council bosses say the school has had £2.3 million spent on it in the last three years, including money for a new extension and access road.

Mr Hunter said: "While I am grateful for everything the authority has done for us, I am disappointed at their position on the sports hall.

"They seem to be saying that we have already had a lot of money spent on facilities.

"Reading between the lines they are looking at what we have already raised and are saying that if we can raise that much why can't we raise the rest.

"We will have to cancel PE lessons and the students will have to do written work instead.

"For some children the exercise they get at school is their only exercise."

And Mr Hunter warned: "If we do not have have a proper sports hall, there is a danger we may not be able to meet our National Curriculum commitment from September."

Brighton and Hove's director of Education, David Hawker, said the council sympathised with Mr Hunter's aims to provide the best possible facilities for his pupils.

But he said that Blatchington Mill had already received the largest investment of any school in the authority and had received only last month a further £30,000 from new money released by the Chancellor for schools to spend where it was most needed.

It has also been given a further £37,000 from the education authority, again to be spent where it was needed.

"With the money he already has and the money he has just received he can build a sports hall.

"It would not be the first class facility that Mr Hunter envisages with full-height brick walls and sprung floors.

"But it would enable him to deliver the National Curriculum as far as PE is concerned in time for the new school year in September."