Young skateboarders are afraid to visit Ilkley skate park because of bullying and drug abuse, it has been claimed.

Town leaders are urging parents to get together and form a group to regularly monitor activities at the East Holmes Field skate park, off New Brook Street, after complaints that many younger skaters dare not visit the park at times.

Year Seven pupils at Ilkley Grammar School have made their fears known to Ilkley parish councillors.

Parish Council chairman, Councillor Heathcliffe Bowen, said parents should know about the problems. The council cannot organise its own patrols of the skate park, but he suggested parents could organise a formal system to monitor the skate park themselves.

Coun Bowen said: "We felt that as the parish council we should try to alert parents that it's a problem and they may wish to get together and have a kind of monitoring system. There's nothing we can do in that respect."

The skate park was finally opened in 2003 after four years of campaigning and planning, and an intensive £52,000 fundraising driver by community group PipeDream. The group, which disbanded after the park was opened, wanted to provide much-needed facilities for young people in the town.

Inspector Darren Minton, of Keighley Police, said bullying and drug abuse had not been reported to officers, to his knowledge, but said police do visit the skate park as part of their routine patrols around Ilkley.