PEOPLE living in the West Lane area of Keighley fear council contractors are breaking a 90-year-old covenant.

Dorothy Ackroyd, who lives with husband Arthur in Poplar Terrace, believes a nearby field should never be developed.

Former Keighley MP and businessman John Brigg, who owned the West Lane business John Brigg & Co Ltd, gifted the piece of land to the people of West Lane in 1911.

Mr Brigg at that time owned most of the houses and land in the area, and wanted to preserve a green area off Lustre Street and Cashmere Street for recreation.

A deal was struck between himself and the now defunct Keighley Corporation.

Residents triumphed in a battle with St Andrew's Primary School several years ago when the school planned to build on the site.

But now there are plans to use part of the field as an access road to two new classrooms.

Mrs Ackroyd says: "We are pursuing an old argument and we always fight. With planning permission you're supposed to post up notices.

"We weren't notified. The diggers just arrived one morning.

"If we don't make a protest eventually somebody is going to say 'they don't use that field for anything'.

"We have copies of the covenant saying they can't use the land for anything other than recreation."

But Bradford Council's asset management director, Linda Carmichael, says: "We are allowing the contractors working on the school to use a strip of land approximately five meters wide as temporary access to the site and as a parking space for 13 weeks.

"When they have finished the land will be reinstated to its original condition.

"As their use is temporary it does not contravene the conditions under which the land was bequeathed."