There can be little doubt that Bradford's sport and leisure facilities are in a deteriorating state. The district's 21 venues will need more than £6 million spending on them in the next five years to bring them up to scratch and create access for disabled people.

It's a problem many local authorities across the country have had to wrestle with as sport and leisure slips further down the funding priority list.

Audit Commission inspectors last year gave the district's leisure facilities only a "fair" one-star rating which was one of the few dark clouds in the Council's overall assessment as a "good" authority.

As with education (which is now run in partnership with a private company) and housing stock (which has been transferred to associations and trusts), a radical approach is needed.

It seems the only sensible way ahead is to look at the option of some kind of partnership or leisure trust or mixture of both to inject some much-needed funding into the facilities.

The alternatives, of crumbling facilities which only manage to stagger on until they have to be closed on health and safety grounds with staff facing redundancy as a result or big increases in council tax to rake in the cash to carry out the work, are both unacceptable.

Run properly and with imagination and the benefit of business expertise, a partnership with the private sector could not only rejuvenate sport and leisure across the district but could also bring in the cash to provide much-needed new facilities right at the heart of the city and help in the drive to bring people back to the centre.