Residents have overwhelmingly backed a proposal to keep a York school site for purely educational uses.

A show of hands at a well-attended public meeting showed a vast majority in favour of a bid for Queen Anne School which would not involve any extra housing being built in the area.

The £4.8 million offer to owners City of York Council for the site off Bootham involves the whole area being used by neighbouring St Peter's School.

There were no votes in favour of three other bids involving both educational use and housing on the site, though there were ten abstentions at the meeting in the Salvation Army Citadel in Gillygate.

Calling for the "straw poll", city council leader and local ward councillor Rod Hills told the audience: "I have said from the start that we are actually going to listen to you and we are going to do what you want us to do."

The meeting heard that the three residential-housing bids, two of which involve nearby Bootham School, involved offers of between £5 million and £6.2 million. Chairman Coun Carol Wallace said the council was obliged by the Government to accept the "highest appropriate bid".

But Coun Hills said he believed they could defend accepting the lower bid because the gap between the offers was now small and because of traffic and other environmental issues.

Bill Woolley, the council's assistant director for planning and transport, said 276 vehicles a day used the roads around Queen Anne School before it closed. Their prediction for the purely educational use was 210 vehicles a day, while those for the options involving housing ranged from about 700 to over 1,000.

Mr Woolley added one developer said its offer would drop by £2 million if they had to accept the traffic reduction measures the council was suggesting. Another said it could meet them without lowering the offer, but council officers did not have sufficient information to support that view.

He said the solely educational option did not have to go through the planning process and the council would receive the cash more quickly which could be used to help finance new investment in Canon Lee School, with which Queen Anne has merged.

Jonathan Martin from Bootham expressed concern for pre-school children living in the narrow roads around the school if traffic increased there.

Philip Crowe from Clifton asked if it was not possible to have a vehicle-free residential development, but Mr Woolley said the backers of the schemes did not consider that feasible.