EXCITING plans to give the youth of Bramhope a new meeting place are expected to be revealed within weeks.

Village organisations and volunteers working as newly-formed group Action Youth hope to announce details of their youth centre project after their next meeting on January 31.

And young people are to be given a chance to say what facilities they want to see in the village via a special website.

Following an appeal by Bramhope Youth Development Trust for a villager to act as the new group's co-ordinator, Bramhope resident Steve Weatherley offered to take charge.

Mr Weatherley, who has been involved in work with church youth groups, is expected to act as a chairman for the group, and help lobby the local authority and businesses to further the project's cause.

Bramhope YDT chairman, Geoff Mills, said the group is keen to show villagers it is more than a talking shop, and hopes to make an announcement within weeks.

He said: "We had a meeting to pool our ideas, and to check that we had some common ground in what we had been talking about, and common ideas and objectives."

Mr Mills said the members of Youth Action discovered they had many ideas in common, and there had been differences of opinion between member organisations.

Bramhope Primary School has been involved in the discussions, along with a number of village clubs and organisations which work with young people.

Bramhope Youth Development Trust, which was set up in 1999, with more than £200,000 from Leeds City Council's sale of the village youth club, has been trying to find a worthwhile youth project to take on some of the cash.

It hopes to give a larger grant to any viable project which aims to provide a permanent facilities for young people

But both the Bramhope YDT and Action Youth have also been looking into a temporary meeting centre for young people as a 'quick win' before any permanent centre is set up.

Mr Mills said Bramhope YDT plans to set up a youth-orientated website in January or February to encourage young people to contribute their own ideas to the scheme.

The website, he said, would give members of both groups an insight into what facilities young people are in favour of, to ensure they do not embark on a project which prove unpopular.