A FAILED plan to create a new headquarters and community centre left a Bradford charity £88,000 out of pocket, it has emerged.

Bradnet, which provides assistance for disabled people in the city, was given a site off Otley Road for its ambitious project to build the new Elan centre but was forced to hand the site back when it was unable to raise the cash to proceed within a five year deadline.

Now, figures from the charity's auditor have revealed the project cost £88,000 in "unrecoverable" costs, though other money invested into the scheme had been reclaimed.

Instead of the Elan project Bradnet now wants to buy the redundant register office in Bradford city centre and have been granted six months to raise the cash by the council, which had planned to auction the building.

That is regarded as a more realistic project in the existing economic climate because while the building has a £600,000 price tag, Bradnet chief executive Asif Hussain is confident that would be open to negotiation.

The Elan centre project had got as far as the charity clearing the site to make way for a new building.

They also had money available in grants from the EU, but that cash required match funding and was subject to strict rules on how the centre could be used.

It was also affected by the economic crisis which meant loaning money was more difficult and a combination of those factors left the project financially derailed.

Financial records for the year ending in 2013 show the charity spent around £60,000 more than it received. During that year it also had £28,000 of corporation tax, previously paid in error, returned.

That meant without the Elan project, the charity would have broken even - an improvement on the previous year when it spent £126,000 more than its income.

However, auditor Ian Featherstone said the organisation was now financially well placed for the future.

"Against the year before, it was quite a tremendous recovery," he said, "I understand that trend is continuing and that is fantastic."

The work of the charity "benefits some of the most vulnerable people of Bradford" he said.

Mr Hussain said the charity had faced a tough year because of increased difficult in securing funding and because some of the services it had sold to the old NHS Primary Care Trusts had not been required by the Clinical Commissioning Groups which replaced them.

That had hit the scale of the outreach work Bradnet did, but the hope was to increase the aspect of the organisation's work in future, he said.

"The commitment is there to see outreach grow again. That is the bedrock of our work," he said.

He also acknowledged Bradnet had to become more business focused with a "mean and keen" approach to its work.

"We need to take stock and control ourselves without relying on external advisors. We have the ability to grow and develop," he said.

MORE TOP STORIES