The council has bought back a school building in Colliers Wood - which was sold a decade ago – to enable a primary school to nearly triple in size.

Merton Council has bought the Jamia College from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association (AMA) as part of plans to greatly expand neighbouring Singlegate primary school.

The site was marketed for £2.5m but, as the Wimbledon Guardian revealed in July , the council had been willing to pay £3m for the building, which was sold for £800,000 in 2002.

Today, the council confirmed it has paid £2,875,000 after the deal was finalised earlier this month and the AMA put it on the market in late April.

Merton’s cabinet member for education, Councillor Martin Whelton, said: “This outstanding school is already heavily oversubscribed, and the purchase of this building will allow us to provide additional places to meet increasing demand from local parents.

“As a result of the expansion, we can also offer a top class education to more pupils through a scheme which utilises existing buildings, and would cost less than if we provided new school buildings.”

A council spokeswoman said the purchase will enable Singlegate to triple in size, from 210 permanent places to 630, with 90 children in each year group.

The council was able to buy the site after last month’s decision by councillors to give Singlegate primary school the entirety of its education section 106 money, collected from various agreements with developers to compensate the borough for building extra homes.

The majority of planning permissions for new housing have come from developments in Wimbledon and Raynes Park and the unspent s106 contributions added up to £875,000.

The rest of the funding comes from the council’s capital budget and a grant from the Department of Education.

Councillor Oonagh Moulton, the opposition Conservative education spokeswoman, said she was very concerned whether the purchase represented value for money, and why the decision was never publically debated.

Coun Moulton said: “Some of the section 106 money was for very specific projects elsewhere in Merton, not for Colliers Wood, so I still have concerns about this.

“The council has kept this a secret until now and it is odd there has been no public scrutiny of whether the money could have been better spent elsewhere.”

The Victorian building is Grade II listed with a modern two-storey extension providing an area of 2,290 sq ft.