Mixed reception for £50m Knottingley transformation

The council is pumping £50m into the area in a bid to improve economic prospects and people’s health.

But at the project’s official launch at Kellingley Social Club, a number of residents voiced fears that some of the proposed ideas won’t go deep enough to tackle the area’s problems.

Around £25m will be spent on building a relief road, connecting Womersley Road with the M62, slightly east of Junction 33.

Cash will also be used to fund skills training for the unemployed and on extra sports provision for those unable to get to the soon-to-be-built leisure centre at Pontefract Park. But several people cited the closure of Knottingley Sports Centre in 2017 as an example that the area is losing out, and suggested that the picture was unlikely to change soon.

Resident Philip Butterfield said: “There is scepticism. I’ve lived here since 2000 and in that time all I’ve seen, predominantly, is things taken away from the town.

“So after all those years that scepticism is understandable. Promises have been made and not kept. There was a development plan a few years ago for the sports centre here and we know where that is now.”