THE sell-off of the former Ilkley Middle School site on Valley Drive could prove good news for people looking for lower-priced homes.

Education bosses want to sell off the site for housing but any developer will have to provide lower cost homes on the site or money to build them elsewhere.

The site is presently used as the Ilkley Grammar School lower school site but once building work is completed on Cowpasture Road, all the pupils will move there.

Ilkley district councillor Martin Smith said while land prices made it extremely difficult to provide lower cost housing in Ilkley, planners were trying their best to prevent the exodus of young families leaving the town because they could not afford the house prices.

Under the Unitary Development Plan for the area, the Middle School site, was made surplus to requirements by the transformation of Bradford's education system from three to two tiers. The buildings will be sold off for housing but the playing fields surrounding the school will remain as open spaces.

Coun Smith said: "We are hopeful we will get some more affordable housing in Ilkley."

He said that money paid over by developers had been used to provide, in conjunction with housing associations, affordable housing on the site of the former International Wool Secretariat research building in Valley Drive.

"We put money into that and there is still a bit of money available," said Coun Smith.

Affordable housing is just one of the areas that will come under the spotlight of a new action plan drawn up by councillors to look at how Bradford looks after its rural areas.

Councillor Anne Hawkesworth, environment chief at City Hall and an Ilkley district councillor, said: "This year a great deal of groundwork has gone into developing strong partnerships to help rural communities."

The initiative was set up in the wake of the devastation of rural communities in the district left by the foot and mouth disease outbreak.

Coun Hawkesworth said that in-depth studies of council activity had proved what many people in the district's rural communities such as Ilkley had suspected; that services and attention had been disproportionately been channelled towards urban areas in Bradford.

Executive members at City Hall will be asked to approve the creation of an action plan to redress the balance in the new year.