VANDALS have left schoolchildren heartbroken after their new recreation area was wrecked.

Just a week after the redevelopment of wasteland at Horton Park Primary School in Bradford was completed to provide playing fields, a bike track, reading area and sports pitches, the school has been left with another hefty bill to repair vandalism.

Ruth Bottomley, business operations director at the school, in Dawnay Road, said everyone was dismayed.

“The school has spent £120,000 and more than two years’ work creating this area and now we will have to spend thousands more,” she said.

“Someone or some people have stolen a digger from a nearby site and driven it through our brand new metal fence and around the sports field. They have made a huge mess.

"Fortunately we hadn’t put the equipment in or that may have been damaged too. The builders only left last week after completing the work and we were preparing to put in the boulders for sitting on, a climbing frame and a timber reading maze.”

Mrs Bottomley said earlier in the week vandals had damaged half the new trees on the site and then on Sunday evening had damaged more before abandoning the dumper truck. A member of the public reported the incident to police at 7.40pm.

“This sort of thing is so disheartening and to happen at a primary school is particularly upsetting. The children are really upset,” she added.

The whole project began two years ago with the development of wasteland to create a space the youngsters could use.

Working with Bradford Council, which owns the land, the school secured £65,000 from landfill tax funder WREN, £20,000 from public health and the remainder coming from school budgets.

Made out of compacted gravel, the track will double as a bike and running facility, and circle one of the pitches.

The land was a perfect place to create a recreation site as it had been blighted by flytipping in recent years, but its transformation would make an outdoor space used by the school pupils during the day and would be open for community use outside school hours as there are very few usable green spaces on the estate and hundreds of local families will be able to benefit from it.

The school has applied for a further grant of £12,000 from Tesco to set up a vegetable garden on the site.

As well as the track a full size football pitch, a five-a-side playing field, and a wildflower meadow are incorporated, and the school council has chosen carefully what equipment it is putting there.

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said the incident had been reported on Sunday night and the stolen dumper truck had been recovered. They were treating the incident as ‘very serious’ and were making inquiries to try to catch those responsible.