A £15 MILLION shake-up of Bradford’s sports facilities will see major improvements to Keighley’s Marley Playing Fields.

Marley will become one of three sites across the district transformed into “district-wide multi-sports hub sites”.

Individual pitches and changing rooms across the district will be refurbished, but other under-use pictures will be sold to help pay for the improvements.

The Bradford District 2019 Playing Pitch Strategy was approved by the council’s decision-making Executive at a meeting last week.

It came after a report into the district’s sports facilities released last year shone a critical light on the declining state of public pitches and fields, with sports clubs pointing to poor maintenance and investment.

The new plan will see £10,523,000 invested in the three district hubs and another £3,130,000 invested in creating five “local multi-sports hub sites” - one in each of Bradford’s constituencies including Keighley/Ilkley.

Each would have improved or new changing facilities and better-quality pitches.

And £1.2m will be spent on improving individual pitches and sports facilities, although the pitches that will benefit have not yet been revealed.

The Executive report revealed revealed that many football pitches at Marley were of poor quality, with much of the site suffering from poor drainage.

The strategy calls for improving the quality of the Marley pitches, and relocating some users from heavily-used pitches to underused pitches nearby.

Part of the works will be funded by the sale of redundant or “low value” pitches - with the council hoping to make £3.5 million from such sales.

Sports England would have a say on the sale of any pitches, and the policy says: “Where any current pitches are lost due to the redevelopment of sites, these will be adequately re-provided through re-investment into new pitches by creating or further developing Hub sites.”

At least £1.5 million of grant funding has also been secured by the Council.

At the Executive meeting, Cllr Sarah Ferriby, Member for Healthy People and Places, said: “This contributes to the health and well-being agenda we are promoting, it will help with both physical and mental health of our residents.”

Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said: “We want people to live longer, healthier lives, we all need to do more exercise, and this will help.”