EDGWORTH Cricket and Recreation Club is to be torn down and replaced by a new £240,000 modern building for community groups.

Trustees of the Barlow Memorial Institute, which manages the premises, off Bolton Road, applied for £160,000 funding from Sport England earlier this year.

And now they have finally fulfilled a list of conditions and filled in all the necessary forms, which has led to the project getting the green light.

The 50-year-old current pavilion is used by the village cricketers, runners and women's rounders team, as well as groups of youngsters for sports. It will be replaced by a traditional-style building with a clock tower.

Work is due to start in late January, and it is hoped it will be finished by July, causing only a small disruption to the cricket season. A second phase of building work will see the changing rooms modernised and new groups invited to use the building.

Steve Simpson, the cricket and recreational development officer who helped put the bid together, said: "We found out we would be given some cash in October, but it came with a list of conditions which had to be met within a certain timescale. We have now met all these conditions and filled in all the necessary forms.

"The old building was dilapidated, decrepit and falling down. It had simply come to the end of its life. It was installed as a temporary building in the mid-1970s and had already been in Queen's Park, Blackburn, for about 20 years.

"Over the years, the group has raised £80,000 itself and this as well as the Sport England lottery money will go into building the new facility, which is for use by the whole village."