NO tenants have yet signed up for a planned £20m public sector hub in Bradford, more than two years after the project was unveiled, the Telegraph & Argus can reveal.

Now the Council’s opposition Conservative group is calling on the Labour leadership to make a decision about whether to proceed at all.

Council bosses are next week poised to set aside half a million pounds of taxpayer cash in case they need to demolish the empty Jacob’s Well council office in Nelson Street where the hub is planned - despite assurances two years ago that the scheme would not cost the authority anything.

And now a cheaper back-up plan, of refurbishing the existing building, has been put on the table.

Councillor Simon Cooke, leader of the Conservative group, said: “This is really concerning.

“The original expectations that the deal would be signed are vanishing into the mists of time.”

He said it was a similar picture in Keighley, where Bradford Council remains the only confirmed tenant for a £19m hub planned on the Keighley College site which is currently being flattened.

He said: “It’s really very concerning that the two biggest Council-led regeneration projects in the district at the moment don’t look like they are going to happen.

“It’s equally concerning that it is only going to happen if we put our money into it, which is not what we were promised.”

Cllr Cooke urged the Labour leadership to decide what to do, adding: “The council needs to make choices about that fairly soon, because otherwise it’s just costing the public money without there necessarily being an obvious route out.”

The scheme, a partnership with private developers, was unveiled in February 2015.

Developers said the hub would take 22 months to build, using lease money from tenants, and they aimed to open it in the first quarter of 2018.

But while the Council vacated the building last summer, no planning applications have been submitted.

A spokesman for the authority told the T&A that while no tenants had signed up, there were “ongoing discussions with national Government departments”.

A new report, going before next week’s Executive meeting, says there is now another option being looked at, as an alternative to demolishing Jacob’s Well and constructing a new-build hub.

This would see the 1970s office building refurbished, with new cladding and a new roof.

The decision over whether to demolish or refurbish would depend on the tenants’ “funding availability”, according to the report.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, who leads on regeneration at the Council, said: “The Jacob’s Well public sector hub is a developer-led project with the Council as landowner, so we can only move at the pace of the developer.

“However, negotiations are on-going with a potential tenant and we are not looking at other uses for the site.

“The potential demolition of Jacob’s Well would be in preparation for the hub but we are continuing to review the situation as it would depend on the needs of the potential tenant.”

He said in Keighley, the development costs for the hub “are in the Council’s Capital Plan and we are in detailed negotiations with the principal tenant”.

Developer Chiltington Land did not respond to requests for a comment.