A COUNCILLOR has vowed not to rest until a derelict former school is razed to the ground.

Tong ward’s Labour councillor Alan Wainright was speaking out after firefighters were called yet again to the Yorkshire Martyrs site on Thursday night.

Fire crews from Bradford spent an hour tackling a blaze believed to have been started deliberately in the gymnasium. Police have been made aware.

Councillor Wainright said it was a “disgrace” the building, blighted by fires since it shut in 2010, was still standing.

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He said he believed it was “riddled with asbestos”. “It’s not right that every time it goes on fire there’s probably all that stuff floating about in the area right next to another school with more than 1,000 pupils,” he said. “I want it demolished and I won’t rest or let go off it until it happens.”

Cllr Wainright said he had written to the Council’s Strategic Director of Place, Steve Hartley, about it before and was meeting with him next week.

“I’ve had grave concerns about that site since it was first vacated. It’s a disgrace,” he said.

The former Roman Catholic school shut after a re-structuring by the Leeds Catholic Diocese, brought about by falling numbers of children on the rolls at Catholic schools in Bradford.

In February this year concerns were raised after arsonists started a major fire at the school – in at least the third incident at the site in the last six years.

Fire crews from Bradford, Odsal and Cleckheaton had to be called but managed to contain the blaze within the school’s old assembly hall.

Around 25 per cent of the ground floor of the two-storey building was said to have been involved in the fire, which was thought to have been started deliberately. It had previously been targeted by arsonists in 2011, when fire ripped through an old science block, and in March 2015, when someone broke into the building and set fire to materials inside.

According to residents living nearby, people, not just youths, are regularly seen going in and out of the buildings.

In July 2015, the Leeds Catholic Diocese applied to Bradford Council for permission to tear down part of the fire-damaged buildings. Local authority planners said approval was not required for the demolition, stating the building was an “eyesore and a risk to the public from potential collapse”.

However, the Diocese sold the site to Apollo Beds Ltd, based in Liversedge. The Telegraph & Argus could not get a response when it tried contacting the company.

The land surrounding the site is also part of the Tong Leadership Academy.