Visitors to a World Heritage Site could soon find themselves lost' for tourist information.

Anne and Roger Heald, who have run Saltaire's unofficial tourist information centre for more than a decade, are to quit.

Boards advertising the prominent four-storey building in Victoria Road for sale have gone up.

Mr and Mrs Heald's decision to sell the successful business, which is a Yorkshire Tourist Board member although not an official tourist information centre, was made after mutterings' Bradford Council had plans to open one up.

Their decision to sell up means the village could be left without a tourist information centre of its own - the nearest is in Shipley.

Bradford Council has confirmed the mutterings' are true but says plans to open a new visitor centre are at a very early stage and there are still lots of issues to be sorted, such as securing funding and finding a suitable site.

Shipley College, which has several sites in Saltaire, has revealed the Council has already been in touch with it and that it is one of the possible locations.

The spokesman said: "Discussions are currently ongoing. The link with the college's tourism courses could be a very positive move forward, opening up new opportunities for students."

Bradford Council's executive member for the environment and culture Councillor Anne Hawkesworth said: "We feel we need to offer a wider range of tourism services to cater for the rising number of visitors, which we expect will increase even further with the development of the Airedale Masterplan and proposals for a £4.9 million restoration of Roberts Park."

Mrs Heald, who runs costumed guided tours from her centre, books tourist accommodation and sells leaflets, books, maps and souvenirs, said she was "not sour" about the Council's plans but it had forced her to give up her business earlier than planned.

"It's time to go,'' she said. Our business would not be able to survive once the new centre opened. They would do everything we do. We had planned to keep it going for another few years before moving on and doing something different but this has moved things forward and we don't want to be here to see it happen. We want to be the first to go and I don't mean that in a sour grapes kind of way."

And she added: "We do fear what will happen in the meantime for visitors coming to Saltaire, people need to have somewhere to go and talk to someone about this wonderful village."

Fellow trader Helen Kemp said she shared Mrs Heald's concerns: "It's Bradford Council's responsibility to make sure it comes up with something. My suggestion is they use the new reception in the refurbished Victoria Hall to have leaflets there."

And Eddie Lawlor from Saltaire Village Centre said: "There's been talk for a while about the Council planning a new centre and we've heard Shipley College could be a likely spot for it."

A spokesman at the Yorkshire Tourist Board said: "Saltaire doesn't have a tourist information centre at the moment so news that the Council wants one is excellent.

I'm sure such a major important site as Saltaire would not be left without anywhere offering tourists some kind of information in the meantime."

Saltaire shares Unesco World Heritage Site status with the Taj Mahal and the pyramids of Egypt, thanks to its preservation as a Victorian Model Industrial Village. Yorkshire's only other World Heritage Site is Fountains Abbey near Ripon - it does not have its own tourist information centre either.

e-mail: kathie.griffiths @bradford.newsquest.co.uk