IT will come as a huge blow to many that Keighley's much-lauded new shopping complex is no longer to include any leisure element.

Originally, we were promised a multi-screen cinema and restaurants alongside retail at the East Parade site.

It was that which carried the multi-million pound scheme and lifted it to a higher plane.

But now, we learn it is not going to happen.

Instead we are left simply with proposals for another bunch of shops, which frankly the town needs like a hole in the head.

Of course there are still those sceptics who question whether anything will materialise anyway at the plot, which has now sat untouched like a lunar landscape for years.

We need something doing with the site, but retail units?

You only have to look at the empty and increasingly tatty properties in part of North Street – and the still-disused former Victoria Hotel a mere stone's throw from the East Parade land – to answer the question.

A new 'retail park' would only serve to draw shoppers away from the town centre and hit existing traders.

Time to go back to the drawing board.