DEVASTATED villagers have warned their community could die after popular plans to redevelop Penn School were rejected by Wycombe District Council.

The development would have included a new doctors' surgery, pharmacy and post office, housing, an old people's complex and offices.

Deaf charity Sign put forward the plans for the community facilities as part of a scheme to safeguard the future of the school and to benefit residents.

However, the council rejected the project on the grounds that it needed 21 acres of green belt land.

Without the development it is likely Penn School, Penn Surgery and the Penn Pharmacy and Post Office will all close.

Khal Khaliq, director of Penn Pharmacy and Post Office in Church Road, said: "People are just stunned this is a real blow. This would have been so good for the village.

"If the doctors' surgery shuts, the pharmacy will shut and the post office, not to mention the school. This will rip the heart out of the village. We are devastated."

Doctors at Penn Surgery, Elm Road, have already decided they cannot take on any new patients. The surgery closed its lists early last week after the news that their plans for a new building had been rejected.

The surgery will now have to close its doors for good by 2004, leaving more than 5,000 patients with no family doctor.

Without a move the surgery cannot meet NHS requirements.

Dr Brian McGirr said: "My feeling is that the more we remove from the village, the more obsolete the idea of Penn as a village becomes.

"We have tried very hard to keep Penn from being thought of as simply a Wycombe suburb but if we cannot look towards facilities in the village then that is what it will become."

Sign has until March 31, to buy Penn School from its owners Camden Borough Council which wants to sell it to fund special education in Camden.

Penn School is a day and boarding school for children who are deaf or who have language difficulties.

It will also have to close unless the development goes ahead because without the scheme Sign cannot afford to buy it.

Headteacher Alan Jones added that closing the school would lead to 41 people losing their jobs.

Sign's chief executive Steve Powell said after last week's decision that the community in Penn had been "effectively killed".

Alan Page, former chairman of the Penn Patients' Link, said patients of Penn Surgery felt badly let down by councillors.

He continued: "Over the past few years the village has seen the demise of most shops and if the pharmacy and post office eventually close the effect would be devastating for the young and old who do not have personal transport.

"To kill off the project at this stage casts further doubt in the minds of the local electorate on the ability of local councillors."

An elderly villager, who did not want to be named, said: "I had my name down for one of the elderly homes in the development.

"It's a shame. The village could well become little more than a dormitory." See Sign appeals for plan's approval