SOUTH Norwood police station will not be opening as a school in September after the group behind the plan pulled out.
The building, in Oliver Grove, was due to become STEM Academy Croydon Gateway later this year.
The 16 to 19 college had been approved by the Department for Education (DfE), appointed a head teacher and received more than 50 applications from prospective students.
Last month head Adrian Miller spoke to the Advertiser about his ambitious plans for the school.
But Stem Academy Education Trust has now scrapped the plan in order to concentrate on its other academy in Islington.
Tony Sewell, the school's chairman of governors, said in a statement sent to the Advertiser today (Wednesday): "We have taken the decision not to continue with our proposal to open STEM Academy Croydon Gateway, our planned 16-19 academy for Croydon.
"This has been a very difficult decision for the Trust to make.
"However, setting up a free school is a major undertaking and at this present time we feel that we are unable to commit the level of resource required to successfully launch a new academy whilst also fully supporting STEM Academy Tech City, our existing 16-19 academy in Islington."
STEM Academy Education Trust's decision to back out of the school comes weeks after Mr Miller spoke publicly about how it would help to address a skills shortage in specialist industries based on science, technology, engineering and maths.
He spoke with enthusiasm about how the former police station would make an ideal home for a school, including plans to convert the holding cells into robotics laboratories.
It is understood he will now work with the pupils who applied to the school to help find alternative STEM courses outside Croydon.
The police station closed in 2012 as part of budget cuts and was later put up for sale.
It is unclear what will now happen to the building.
STEM is the second proposed school in the north of the borough to collapse in the last year.
In June 2014 the group behind Advance Free School mysteriously pulled out of plans to open on Highbury Playing Fields in Thornton Heath, having already spent £84,000 of public money on the proposal.
