THE organisation in charge of Keighley’s Central Hall is celebrating winning a £10,000 grant application.

Community Action Bradford & District bid for the money from the National Lottery’s Awards for All scheme.

Julie Lintern, manager at Central Hall, said she and her colleagues found out on February 18 that the application had been successful.

“We were overjoyed to hear the news,” she added. “We’d applied at about Christmas time. We had to demonstrate we needed the money and show what we wanted to spend it on.

“The purpose of this is to make better use of the building.

“We have a large cafe area at the front of the hall on the ground floor, so we’re going to use the funding to put up a dividing wall there.

“This will create a new room for community activities, which at the moment are held upstairs.

“It will enable us to bring in more income while creating an intimate and accessible downstairs space for the community.

“The wall will be on runners, so even though it will be quite heavy it’ll be possible to move it and open the space up when required.

“We’ve got someone lined up to do the work, so we hope to have the wall in place within a month.”

She explained the cafe must currently close on Tuesday afternoons to allow bridge club gatherings to go ahead.

She added that when the dividing wall is in place the cafe will be able to remain open at these times.