WORK has begun in earnest on a multimillion-pound building project that will spell the end of Canvey’s oldest secondary school.

Parts of Furtherwick Park School, off Folksville Road, will be knocked down this summer to make way for new buildings which will house Castle View School when it relocates.

Diggers moved on to the site to begin work on the £28million project as soon as the children finished school for the summer.

During the holidays, foundations will be laid for 65 per cent of the new buildings.

Contractors have begun flattening the front of the site and removed trees, including two well-established willows.

Lynn Pullinger, of Long Road, Canvey, is devastated by the loss of the trees, which were planted in Furtherwick Road and had previously screened the school site.

She said: “We weren’t told the trees were going to go. They were beautiful, and had been there for years.

“Old people sat under them on the benches.

“The council is always banging on about being green and then it goes and takes down these trees.”

A diseased tree at the back of the site, facing on to Elm Road, has also had to be removed, to make way for the Essex County Council-led scheme, which is being built with money from the Government’s Building Schools for the Future fund.

Brian Wood, a Castle Point and Essex County councillor, said: “Although I’m upset that established trees have been removed, I have been assured that trees will not be removed just for the sake of it.

“The willow trees may not have been on the school site, but their roots were and so they have to be removed, otherwise they could have interfered with the new building.”

The clearance will make way for the new school buildings, which will face Folksville Road.

Some of the existing buildings will be demolished and the remaining buildings will be segregated from the construction site to ensure the safety of pupils who return to school in September. The old hockey pitch will be broken up and a multi-use games area built in its place.

New trees will be replanted on the site when the project is complete in 2012.