A council’s £30 million leisure centre – a project paused due to spiralling costs as inflation bit hard last year – will be built after all.

It is possible that Calderdale Council’s new leisure centre, including a swimming pool, could be ready to open its doors in as early as two or three years’ time.

Halting the project – which involves building a new centre on the site of the existing one, now closed, at North Bridge, Halifax – last autumn, councillors were told costs had increased from the initial £28 million to £31 million.

Then at the height of last autumn’s spiralling inflation, that had risen to around £35 million with no guarantee it would stop there, and the council’s Cabinet ordered a review of the authority’s options.

Now, at last, there was good news – “The plans are back on track at the North Bridge site,” said Leader of the Council, Coun Jane Scullion.

It had been devastating to have to pause the project last autumn and look at the whole provision of leisure in Halifax, she said.

“It’s really not been easy these last nine months.

“A lot of work has gone on behind the scenes, they have been difficult financial times and they have not got a lot better, particularly with building inflation,” said Coun Scullion (Lab, Luddenden Foot).