AN application for a £10,000 pre-feasibility grant to fund an independent report on Haworth Community Centre has been turned down.

The volunteer committee which runs the Bradford Council owned centre, in Butt Lane, are trying to work out how they can safeguard the run down property's future.

It is owned by the district council's Youth Services, which has been conducting a detailed review of all of its buildings.

Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury parish councillor Ashna Yates, who helped the centre's committee apply for the money, confirmed last week that the application lodged with the Locality community organisations network had been refused.

"They had thousands of people applying for funding, and they're sending us some information about why they turned us down," she said.

"But we're extremely upset because we don't know what we're going to do now.

"We don't yet know what Bradford are going to do with the building and we can't afford to lose it.

"It's a beautiful building in the middle of Haworth, but it's had no repairs for the last 11 years, even though lots of different groups use the centre.

"The mums and tots group meets there every morning, the Scouts and Cubs use it – they have nowhere else to go.

"It's also used for the Haworth 1940s and Steampunk weekends and for weddings and parties."

Coun Yates said the pre-feasibility grant application rejection made it harder to formulate any potential plan for a group of local people to take over the community centre.

"We don't know where we can get the money to take this forward," she warned.

Worth Valley Ward councillor Rebecca Poulsen, who previously said that the community centre was in a "terrible" state of repair, said she was disappointed to hear that the funding application had failed.

"One possible option for the centre would be to have a community transfer if funds could be found, but this refusal makes it difficult to go down that avenue," she added.

"I will be speaking with council officers to see what alternatives are available.

"The building has been neglected, and I've asked questions about what happened to money allocated to rebuild it. The Labour group cancelled that scheme in 2010.

"I used to run the Haworth toddler group as a volunteer, and they need something local and easily accessible.

"It would be no use telling them to go to Keighley. When you've got little ones you can't drag them here there and everywhere.

"If the community centre is to close I would be making sure that we can get a new centre of some description in the village. That would be my priority."