ONE of Bradford’s oldest children’s charities is seeking planning permission to turn a Grade II listed property into a city centre crash pad for under-privileged young people.

The Cinderella Club bought 16 Chapel Street in Little Germany in the early 1960s and has let it out in the past to raise fund. But now the club is asking Bradford planners to allow it to fully refurbish the building, including a stop-over facility.

Terry Pearson, one of the charity’s four trustees and this year’s chairman, says the crash-pad would be used by children such as one youngster the organisation recently helped who had been living in rat-infested squalor and contracted leptospirosis.

“Fortunately thanks to great medical care the child survived but now lives with disabilities,” he said.

Bradford Cinderella Club wants the project to provide an environment where one or two children can be taken by youth and care workers to “crash” for one or two nights’ respite from their usual environment to see that life can be better.

“They would have proper beds with clean bedding, clean showers and bathroom facilities, on-on-one care in a calm, fun environment. We want it to be stop-over experience the young people will remember for the rest of their life, give them something to aim for, said Mr Pearson. The youngsters would be supervised and cared for at the mid-terraced property by youth workers funded by the charity.

Mr Pearson said the charity was excited and hoped to hear back from planners early in the New Year.

Plans also include disabled access and a passenger lift.

The ground floor will provide an office and facilities for the running of the charity and the basement will be used for general storage and double up as a games area.

The property would also have to be be insulated, rewired and re-plumbed with a new heating and hot water system.

New CCTV and intruder/fire alarm systems will need to be be fitted.

Mr Pearson said: “We’d like to think we have changed with the times over the past 127 years and that so has the way we deliver what is needed to meet the needs of some of Bradford’s most under-privileged young people. It’s going to be a massive investment but we hope it will be one that will keep on giving for 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.”