THE Ministry of Food in Bradford is due to close its doors next week after more than eight years in the city centre.

The healthy cooking initiative, launched by Jamie Oliver, opened in 2009 and is based on John Street.

But the council announced plans to withdraw funding for the project in November 2016 as part of its attempt to make £82m of budget cuts.

The final sessions will be held at the centre on Monday. The team will also be holding a party to celebrate the centre's achievements over the past eight years on February 5.

Soraya Overend, manager of Jamie's Ministry of Food in Bradford, said it will be both a sad and a happy occasion.

She said: "That's what's so hard about walking away from this project.

We have seen so many people come through the doors. We know it works because we see so many success stories - people come back to ask us for more recipes and tell us what they have been cooking.

"We know that we have made an impact, the whole team is so dedicated.

"But we understand that there's no money there.

"We are just the tip of the iceberg, lots of other organisations have lost their funding through the cuts too."

And with the news that more than 40 per cent of Bradford children are overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school, Soraya said the team has spent the past year teaching more than 700 youngsters about healthy eating.

The team has been visiting schools, running summer courses and hosting cookery competitions to help children enjoy real food.

She said: "It's probably been our busiest year working with children and even if we only helped 200 of those 700 children learn more about healthy eating, our job is done.

"It's the social aspect of it as well, not just learning how to cook. We eat the food together after we cook and we have a chat."

The centre has three staff and Soraya has not ruled out the possibility of finding funding for the project elsewhere.

Cllr Val Slater, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Health and Wellbeing, said:  “Due to the continuing government cuts to our district, we are having to find another £30.7m over the next two years.

"This is in addition to the £256m worth of cuts we have had to make since 2010.

"Meanwhile we have growing demands for vital services, for example in caring for the elderly and looking after vulnerable children, and we are also committed to maintaining other valued services which residents rightly expect to receive.

"Faced with competing priorities and a shrinking budget to fund them, the decision was taken that sadly we can no longer afford to fund the Ministry of Food scheme at this time.

“Helping people to live healthier lives remains of great importance to us which is why we have established the Healthy Bradford Plan.

"This plan is around delivering changes to make being healthy easier for everyone.

"This includes encouraging primary schools to take up the Daily Mile to help make schools in the district healthier, happier and great places to learn.  It will help schools raise attainment levels, reduce childhood obesity and make a happy environment for them to learn in.”

The facility 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.

And Soraya has been managing the project since the start.

She said one of her favourite memories was meeting Jamie Oliver when he visited the centre in 2010: "It was lovely. He was so excited about the people we were working with - his enthusiasm for the project was amazing."

And she said she was proud of the Ministry of Food's involvement with Bradford Food Festival, when celebrity chef Gennaro Contaldo visited, as well as some of the work the organisation has done with ex-offenders, care leavers and blind people.

She said: "When we taught visually impaired people to cook we talked about senses and where their hands go when they are chopping.

"They were fantastic, they had no fear and they knew what they were doing.

"For the money the project cost I think it has ticked all the boxes. We have made changes to people's lives. There are lots of times when it has just been a gas with the people who walked through the doors.

"It's been a brilliant eight years and I wouldn't change it."

The celebration takes place at the Ministry of Food on February 5 from 2pm to 4pm.