The long-awaited confirmation of the location of Sutton's newest secondary school has finally been officially announced.

The Education Funding Authority (EFA) has selected the Rosehill all-weather pitch, in Rose Hill, as its preferred site for a new free school, confirming what the Sutton Guardian reported last month.

The confirmation leaves the future of Sutton Council's newly purchased Sutton Hospital site, bought in March for £8m and heralded by the authority as key to saving children's education in the borough, in question, though the council maintains it is still suitable for a school at a later date.

A spokesman for the Greenshaw Trust, the body awarded the right to run the borough's new free school, said: "The reasons given for selecting the Rosehill All Weather Pitch as the preferred site are that: it is a bigger site making more space available for the school, it is adjacent to playing fields and sports facilities giving opportunities for partnership working, and it is close to Greenshaw High School to enable sharing of resources and specialist teaching staff.

Your Local Guardian:

How we reported the the story in June.

"The Sutton Hospital site has been discounted for a number of reasons, mainly due to the location and size of the site.

"The available land is extremely small for a secondary school and would result in a dominating multi-storey building with limited space for external PE and car parking.

"The DfE has formally notified Sutton Council of its decision and is working with them to agree terms to take control of the necessary land for the school.

The Greenshaw Learning Trust agrees that the Rosehill All Weather Pitch is the preferred site for the school for the reasons given above."

A council spokesman said: "We have been advised that the EFA has chosen a site for Sutton’s new secondary school. We will continue to work with the EFA and the secondary school to take it forward.

"Ever since we identified the need for a new secondary school to open in 2017 with another possibly needed in 2019, we have been working hard to find two suitable sites in Rosehill and Belmont which we offered to the EFA along with feasibility studies for each.

"The Belmont site will still be available for a new school should we need one to open in 2019. The exact size of the school would be decided at a later date taking into account the need for school places.

"If a school is not developed on the site then we have many other options for the land including being part of proposals to develop a world-leading Life Science Cluster for drug development and treatment with our partners the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research."