JAMIE Oliver’s charity has said a Council plan to close Bradford’s Ministry of Food “makes no sense” in a city with a serious obesity problem.

Bradford Council this week revealed plans to close the healthy cooking facility pioneered by the celebrity chef as part of £82m of budget cuts.

But a spokesman for the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation said the proposal to axe funding from 2018 showed a “lack of commitment” to tackling the obesity crisis and they were now seeking a “constructive dialogue” with the authority over the centre’s future.

She said: “Since it launched in 2009, Bradford has engaged tens of thousands of people in food education activities.

“In 2015 alone, 5,042 people attended a cooking course at the centre, empowering them to feed themselves and their families better.

“In a city that has some of the highest rates of obesity and diet-related disease, this decision makes no sense.”

The facility, in John Street, was one of six Jamie’s Ministry of Food branches which opened in deprived areas across the UK after his 2008 TV series of the same name highlighted a lack of basic cookery skills in Rotherham.

Back in May, the Bradford district was revealed as the third “fattest” in England, with 1,907 hospital admissions linked to obesity in a year.

Bradford Council’s deputy leader, Councillor Val Slater, said: “Obviously we are saddened to have to put forward this proposed closure as part of the Council’s budget for 2017/2018, but we are having to make a lot of difficult decisions in the light of having to slash £82m from the overall local authority budget over the next two years.”

The authority has spent a total of £750,000 on funding the Bradford Ministry of Food since it opened, while the foundation provides recipes, training and course materials.