A funding crisis has kicked Bradford Council’s ambitious plans for a £75.5 million Odsal Sports Village firmly into touch, a new report has revealed.

Last June, councillors agreed to push forward with a scheme to redevelop Odsal stadium and replace Richard Dunn Sports Centre with an option which met everything on their wish list.

It included a new 18,000 all-seat stadium for Bradford Bulls, a community sports centre with a 25-metre pool, a 120-bed hotel, and 80,000sq ft of sports retail and extra parking.

But it now appears that a decision by the Learning and Skills Council to freeze funding for major campus refurbishment plans at Bradford College has also delivered a fatal blow to the Sports Village plans, of which the college is a partner.

With the college unable to provide any cash for the scheme it has left the Council with only £19.3m of the £75.5m costs secured with £15m committed from the authority’s own capital budget, £4.1m from regional development agency Yorkshire Forward and £200,000 from England Netball. It has now forced the Council to go back to the drawing board to come up with five scaled-down options for Odsal which vary in costs from £22.5m to £39.6m and range in scale from only re-developing Richard Dunn Sports Centre to revamping the existing Bulls’ stadium by covering spectator areas and building community sports facilities on the neighbouring Northern View Hospital site.

The options include the majority of community sports as before, but the amount of spectator seating, indoor cricket, sports hall courts and parking would vary. In addition the two cheaper options do not involve any changes to Odsal stadium and no commercial element, such as a hotel, sports shops and restaurant.

The £19.3m secured funding for the Sports Village can still be used for the chosen substitute scheme but all five options would involve the Council borrowing money – between £1.4m and £4.3m depending on the site.

To start the ball rolling, the Council’s executive will next week be asked to approve the transfer of £1.2m feasibility funding, which was earmarked for the original scheme. This will allow a “substantive business case” to be drawn up for the five alternatives, which is expected to be reported back to the executive by the beginning of next year.

Councillor Adrian Naylor, the Council’s executive member for regeneration, last night told the Telegraph & Argus: “Back in June we picked the £75.5m compliant scheme and we wanted to work it up. Because of the changes in circumstances of the partners and the economy since then we have been looking at what the compliant scheme was going to provide, but in a different way.”

He added: “We have got to be realistic. When we drew up the £75.5m scheme the world was a different place. Since the LSC debacle with their funding some of our partners are not able to put capital funding in. We have now looked at all the permutations and a range of options which have flexibility.”

Bulls chairman Peter Hood admitted to the T&A he was surprised by the revelation that the original plans had bitten the dust and he warned that the club would soon need a ground that suited Super League criteria.

He said: “This is news to me. It’s clear that something has to be done with the facilities both at Richard Dunn and Odsal which are not fit for purpose in the 21st century. But which option is feasible is a matter for others to decide.

“We live in a franchise era and we need to re-bid for our Super League franchise in 2011 for the following three years. Stadium criteria form a very large part of that bid and when we make it, it will not be sufficient to simply have ideas about a stadium possible being redeveloped in the future, we would need to have bulldozers on site, so to speak.”

Councillor David Warburton, the Labour group’s spokesman for sport, said: “Options B and C would be totally inappropriate to what we were looking at because they don’t support the Bulls and the original idea that we were looking for.

“I also feel some of the potential community benefits will suffer in because they were based around working with the Bulls. Some of the options may mean that the Bulls would be looking for a new home, which would be a major blow to the community and businesses in this area.”

Councillor David Ward, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said: “Our position has not changed in that we have always been very supportive of the sports village concept and think it would be a fabulous district and regional asset. We are quite happy for the £15m of Council funding to be put into the scheme to support the community assets associated with it, but we can’t countenance the use of public funding for a stadium for the Bradford Bulls because they are a private organisation.”

The executive meeting takes place at City Hall, Bradford, next Tuesday, from 2pm. It is open to the public.