A community project in Bradford was today celebrating a £484,096 lottery grant to help it grow.

The news has come as a pat on the back for those who have been running the Kidz Klub in Allerton for the past eight years.

Club co-ordinator Kate Sulc, whose mother started the club with 16 youngsters, said the Big Lottery Fund award announced today was “amazing.” The money from the Lottery’s Reaching Communities programme over the next four years means activities for youngsters will continue and expand to setting up a new a youth project for older children.

And it means another group, Whizz Kidz, will get off the ground helping six to 11-year-olds improve their attitudes and behaviour.

Mrs Sulc said: “One of the ideas of the tea time club is that parents will be able to come and sit down with their children and have a meal together round a table, giving them the time and opportunity to talk together and just catch up with each other.”

A project called Feed Me Better is also in the offing and will see the scheme’s workers going into four local primary schools and delivering a health eating programme to Year Five and Year Six children.

The existing Kidz Klub aimed at six to 11-year-olds will continue to run weekly during term-time as it always has.

Soon older young people aged 12-16 will be able to go along to ID, a new youth project that will put on activities.

Mrs Sulc’s husband Josiah, trustee of Kidz Club Allerton, said: “The funding from the Big Lottery Fund will enable Kidz Klub Allerton to build on the past seven years of hard work, providing a fresh approach to children’s and young people’s work in the Allerton area.”

Mrs Sulc said: “My mum started this off with just 16 children because she worked in a local school and saw the need. I’ve got involved since the beginning and in that time we’ve seen that need grow. Mum’s taking a bit of a back set now but we now have about 60 to 70 youngsters coming to the Kidz Klub.”