AMBITIOUS plans to restore Otley Bridge to its former glory have received enthusiastic backing from English Heritage.

If everything goes to plan, the much younger pedestrian bridge, tacked onto the side of the ancient bridge in the 1950s, will be removed and replaced with a new one probably from Wharfemeadows Park.

English Heritage has expressed enthusiastic interest in the ambitious project and has agreed to dispatch an engineer from London to take a closer look.

Town councillor Colin Campbell said he was very much encouraged by the positive response from English Heritage.

"We are arranging for a site visit with a structural engineer from London to look at the bridge and to look at some of the parts underneath that we can't see.

"English Heritage seem to be quite enthusiastic. It is one of the oldest bridges in Yorkshire and they seem quite keen about taking the footpath off."

Coun Campbell said English Heritage had indicated that grants could be available to pay for both a feasibility study and also to cover the cost of a new pedestrian bridge.

He added that any feasibility study would have to take into account the number of people who walked across the bridge.

"Everyone knows that a lot of people walk across the bridge, but no one knows just how many - and building a bridge for two people every hour will be a lot different from 200 people every hour."

Coun Campbell, who is also seeking meetings with Leeds City Council's planning and highways department, said it was most likely that the replacement footbridge would stretch from Wharfemeadows Park across to Tittybottle Park, Mill Lane.

Councillors are concerned that the footbridge, which was built to cope with the large number of people crossing the bridge, is in a bad state of repair and does not contribute anything to the look of Otley Bridge.

Classed as an ancient monument, Otley Bridge is one of the oldest bridges in Yorkshire with parts dating back to 1228. The bridge was destroyed by floods in 1723 and a new one built in 1775. Since then, various calls have been made to have it widened, or even demolished altogether.

Coun Campbell added: "If you look around the country, there are some very nice footbridges about. We might not even have to design a new one, we might just be able to point to one and say we'd like one like that."