SIR – The plans for the badly needed new Whitcliffe Mount School in Cleckheaton include demolition of the old original building and grassing over the site.

We can try to save a nice-looking but costly building (which has failed to be listed) or we can use that land positively.

Over 100 children every week train and play football in the very unsuitable mud of West End Park, supported by their parents and a committed band of volunteers.

I suggest that a partnership of community, club and council could take over that community asset, bid for FA money and build a young-football centre of excellence.

The new school facilities will be available out of hours and not all day as currently and are only half the size of the existing building.

I hear that to double the size of that building would cost £2m.

That must be a lot less than any work to remodel the old Spen Pool.

Sports council and lottery funding are available but above all, if we all got together we could raise that amount within our community just as my grandparents in Bradford did 100 years ago, they built a bloomin’ reservoir at a relatively huge cost, all by public subscription.

Martin Webster, Mount View Court, Cleckheaton