Plans to privatise the running of cash-strapped St George's Hall will be discussed at a meeting to decide the future of the venue.

The successful Alhambra Theatre will also be subject to debate at a meeting of Bradford Council's environment scrutiny committee next Wednesday.

As exclusively reported in the Telegraph & Argus last week, council-tax payers are having to fork out more than £1 million a year to run St George's Hall, the equivalent of £10 a ticket.

Even the Alhambra, which attracted 278,000 visitors last year, requires Council subsidies of the equivalent of £3 a ticket.

The committee's chairman, Councillor Ghazanfer Khaliq, said: "We want the Bradford district to have the best theatres available so we are looking at how they could be run in the future.

"Both venues are much appreciated by audiences and we need to make sure we make the most of them.''

Proposals for the Alhambra include setting up a charitable trust to run it. This would be able to attract outside funding.

St George's could be the subject of a market testing exercise to discover if it would be possible to contract out management of the venue to a private company.

Councillor Anne Hawkes-worth, executive member for the environment, said the Council also wanted to gauge public reaction to the proposals.

She said: "It is important to have wide-ranging discussions and listen to all views because we must find the right way forward for both venues."

The review is part of an authority-wide assessment of whether the Council's services are providing value for money to taxpayers.