Youngsters will be able to roll along to their own skate park this year - thanks to a skateboarding teenager.

Bradford Council planners have approved a scheme for a skateboarding, rollerblading and kickabout area at Avenel Road, Allerton.

The project is to transform an area of waste ground which is currently used informally by youngsters as a play area, mainly for football.

Now young people in Allerton are looking forward to the park being ready for action before the end of 1999 after a planning application drawn up by Allert, the Allerton estate action group, was given the green light by the Council.

The scheme, which will see a special surface laid and ramps built, and will cost the Council £15,000, is the brainchild of teenage skateboarder Paul Stoyles.

He told the Council's planning committee that he and other young people needed a facility because the nearest one was at Roberts Park in Shipley and there were now bylaws preventing skating on the roads.

"The furthest I've been when I've been skating is to Wakefield. People regularly travel from Bradford to Wibsey and Bingley but there's nowhere in Allerton," said Paul, 17.

A former Rhodesway School pupil who now works with people with senile dementia, he has been working on plans for the park since he started skating a year and a half ago.

As part of his campaign to get a skate park for Allerton, he canvassed young people at local schools, with 156 saying they would use it and just five saying they wouldn't.

The scheme, which has been drawn up in consultation with local police and youth services, has also been supported by Bradford Councillor Clive Richardson (Con, Thornton), who has been known to have a go at rollerblading himself.

"People tend to think it's only teenagers who are interested but it's a superb keep-fit activity," he said. "I am fascinated by rollerblading. I went on a two-hour tester course and I was the only one who failed. We had to practise falling down to start with and that was what I was best at. I remember ice skating when I was younger and I couldn't find my balance then either."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.