MORE details have emerged about the seven town and village halls being threatened with closure if communities don’t take them on.

Halls in Denholme, Harden, Oakworth, Baildon, Menston, Burley-in-Wharfedale and Silsden are being hit as part of £82m of cuts at Bradford Council over the next four years.

Bradford Council aims to hand ownership of the buildings over to community groups, but Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe has given a stark warning that if no-one comes forward, “they will close”.

In Burley, the village’s parish council has already begun the process of taking over its council-run hall, Queens Hall. The transfer is expected to be complete by April next year.

It is among a host of community assets in Burley which the parish council wants to protect, amid ever-increasing local authority cuts.

Chairman of the parish council, Councillor John Grimshaw, said they had originally started out by looking into taking over various green spaces in the village after growing concerned by an “appalling” lack of maintenance.

They had then also opted to take on the closure-threatened library as well as Queens Hall.

He said Queens Hall was currently under-used and operating at a loss, but they were confident they could turn this around by making it easier to book rooms, for instance.

He said: “We have looked upon it as an opportunity rather than a burden.”

Cllr Grimshaw said it might be more difficult for places without an active and established parish council to take on the running of a community hall.

He said if one team of volunteers was being asked to run a local library, and another team of volunteers had to be found to run a hall, “you start to empty the well of goodwill and resource, particularly if you are starting from scratch”.

But he said: “If you have got a bunch of people who are prepared to give it a go, it’s worthwhile.

“What’s the worst that can happen? You have to give it back to Bradford Council and you lose the village hall? Because you were going to lose it anyway, so it’s worth a shot.”

But moves to transfer or sell off one 19th-century village hall could prove particularly complicated, according to a local councillor.

Councillor Mike Ellis (Con, Bingley Rural) said Harden Memorial Hall was not owned by Bradford Council.

He said: “It was given to the people of Harden as a memorial hall.”

Cllr Ellis said Bradford Council only acted as trustees for the building and any moves to transfer or sell it would prove complex.

He said: “It isn’t a case of saying, ‘Nobody is prepared to take it on, therefore we will put it on the list of premises and buildings to be disposed of.’ They just can’t do that.”

Another of the halls on the list is Baildon’s purpose-built Ian Clough Hall.

Local councillor Debbie Davies (Con, Baildon) said transferring the building to the community was “probably an idea worth exploring”.

She said: “I can’t think of anybody off-hand who could take it on. Obviously, there’s the town council but whether they would be interested, I don’t know.

“There are various groups that use it but there is nobody who uses it all the time. Most groups use it once a week, for an evening or so.”

The other halls at risk are Denholme Mechanics Institute, Holden Hall in Oakworth, Keighley, Kirklands Community Centre in Menston and Silsden Town Hall.

The Telegraph & Argus asked for the estimated value and current running costs of each building, but neither were supplied.

At a press conference yesterday, council bosses said the authority had a policy of encouraging asset transfers of council buildings to communities where possible.

Cllr Hinchcliffe acknowledged that the community halls had been used by various groups “for many years”.

She said services which were facing cuts were valuable to the district but there was now “nowhere else to go” with funding cuts after six years of shrinking budgets.