A GRANT of almost £1 million will help introduce “rain gardens” and new public spaces in Bradford’s top of town area.

Bradford Council has secured £925,000 funding from the European Regional Development Agency to start the first phase of the “city village” planned for the site currently taken up by Oastler Market.

It will be on top of an existing Lottery grant of £2 million issued to the Council to restore some of the area’s heritage buildings, as well as Oastler Square.

Once the Council’s new Darley Street Market opens in 2022, the existing Oastler Market will be demolished. This will be followed by a 10-year programme to transform the area into an urban village of 1,000 homes.

The Council the development will be a “green, healthy and sustainable neighbourhood” with “safer roads, extensively landscaped public spaces, revitalised independent shopping, and new business spaces that will provide a place where people will choose to live, work and thrive and where businesses will want to invest, trade and grow.”

Top of town buildings first to benefit from Lottery cash

The new funding will be used to complement existing plans to improve the space around the statue of Richard Oastler at Northgate and Rawson Road - an area that has become more famous for street drinkers in recent years. The proposed improvements to public spaces will now also include North Parade and Rawson Square.

The funding is from the long winded European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme for Leeds City Region – Integrated Actions for Sustainable Urban Development.

It will be used to deliver improvements that help tackle climate change and the risk of surface water flooding. Public spaces will be planted with semi-mature native trees and soft landscaping that the Council says will deliver new habitats and wildlife areas.

A network of ‘rain gardens’ will be established as part of a drainage system designed to help mitigate local flooding risks. Rain gardens are areas of planting designed to temporarily hold, filter and soak away any rain water that runs off buildings and paved areas in a more sustainable manner rather than straight into sewers. The hard landscape components of the project will see the re-introduction of natural stone paving on main pedestrian routes.

The Council will be working with local stakeholders during the design process to look at the details of any proposals.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Regeneration, Planning and Transport, said: “We’re delighted to secure this funding for North Parade and the Top of Town as it lets us begin to deliver on the emerging vision for the City Village.

“This money from the European Regional Development Agency also provides us with an exciting opportunity to really ‘green’ our city centre with rain-gardens and landscaping that promotes biodiversity, which will help us in our response to the climate change emergency.

“There’s lots of consultation to do with local residents and businesses to discuss what they want to see in a modern city centre and for the City Village and we can’t wait to get started.”