A KEY meeting to discuss the future of eight high schools and one special school has been adjourned after a councillor complained she had not received the agenda in time.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council's children and young people's overview and scrutiny committee was due to debate the £250 million Building Schools for the Future programme at a special meeting yesterday.

But the committee will now reconvene on Monday after City Independent Group leader Ann James said she had not been given enough notice to prepare her arguments.

It had been arranged after the city Independents 'called in' a decision by the council's executive to publish closure notices for seven of the secondary schools so they could be replaced with five new academies. The reorganisation proposals would also see Heathfield School, Chell Heath, close as part of a merger with nearby Middlehurst School.

Michael Coleman, chairman of the scrutiny committee, said it would have set "a very unpleasant precedent for procedure" if they had gone ahead, knowing that a key councillor had not received the council papers.

Monday's meeting, which is open to the public, is due to start at 9am in the Windsor Room at the civic centre.