A traditionalist Christian group has applied to open a free school in Breckland, it has emerged.

The Department for Education is expected to announce soon the fate of 148 applications for free schools - new state-funded schools independent of the local authority.

A Freedom of Information request by the British Humanist Association has revealed the Focus Learning Trust, which is run and controlled by the Plymouth Brethen Christian Church (PBCC), has applied to set up the East Anglian Primary Academy as part of the eighth wave of free schools.

Three other Norfolk free school applications were already in the public domain.

The trust already runs the private Focus School in Swaffham, but all its previous applications to open free schools across England have been rejected.

PBCC spokesman Rod Buckey said it had received an 'overwhelmingly positive response', and added: 'It was designed to support the new 5,000 house development in Thetford, there was no fixed site but we were in communication with a number of developers. It is an area of basic need, Thetford already has a dearth of primary school places and this new housing development will only add to the issue.'

He said the school would not teach creationism as science, and would 'teach evolution as a scientific theory'.

The Focus Learning Trust is a registered charity, but, in 2012, the Charity Commission rejected an application by Preston Down Trust (PDT), a meeting hall of the church, to be registered as a charity, before changing its mind last year.

Last year's decision said that originally it was 'not satisfied the access to religious services was sufficiently open to the public and thought the religious doctrines and practices of PBCC limited the engagement of PDT with the community beyond the Brethren themselves and had a limited beneficial impact on the wider community'.

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