BUILDING work on a long-awaited £11 million school and community centre due to start this week has been delayed until January.

But completion of the long-awaited Castle Hill Community Learning Resource Centre in Tonge Moor remains on target for completion by Easter 2003, say Town Hall chiefs.

The scheme is Bolton's first privately financed school and will include a library, youth club, nursery football pitch and 268-place car park.

Developers Melville Dundas, from Glasglow, will pay for the building and the council will buy it back over 25 years.

The existing Castle Hill School and Castle Hill Centre, off Tonge Moor Road, will be demolished and replaced with an educational centre aimed at the whole community.

Part of the building will be three-storeys high with the rest two-storey.

It will be made using mostly traditional brick with a large glass section.

Speaking when the scheme was approved Tonge Cllr Frank White, said: "Together with other regeneration projects in the Tonge area, I think this represents the biggest change in Tonge Moor since the building of the original estates between the first and second world wars."

Commenting on the delay a spokesman for Bolton Council said: "What we have been doing is working very hard on the pre-construction phase to ensure that everything is exactly right before any building work begins."