A WARMINSTER school could soon be producing the Tim Henmans and David Beckhams of the future thanks to a successful £640,000 national lottery bid for new sports facilities.

Work on the ambitious scheme at Kingdown Community School is due to start within two weeks and players are due on the first tennis courts by the summer holidays.

Headteacher Sheelagh Brown, who has spent three years applying for the funds, said the sports complex should be fully up and running next year and would benefit the local community.

She said: "It's got to be good for Warminster and we would not have got these facilities any other way."

The scheme includes an all-weather sports pitch, four floodlit dedicated tennis courts and four all-purpose courts for tennis, netball, football, basketball and other sports.

As well as providing extensive facilities for the school, which gained specialist sports college status in 2000 the lottery cash means that sports clubs and individuals in Warminster will be able to use the pitches and courts for at least 40 hours a week.

The school had to stress the community use level as the lottery does not fund applications for projects that are purely for schools.

Mrs Brown said: "It is very difficult to meet all the criteria. More than 90 per cent of lottery bids from schools fail so we knew we had to get it right this is a community facility that is based at the school."

Despite the successful outcome, Mrs Brown said she would not have gone down the lottery route if she had known how demanding it would be.

She said: "It's just too time-consuming, and it doesn't stop now we have to meet all their targets."

However, the new facility will be a central part of the school's plan to be a sporting centre of excellence, which has seen it take on full-time tennis and football coaches in the past year.

Mrs Brown said: "We have two goals; firstly, to engage all our pupils in some kind of sporting activity from sailing to tae kwondo as well as tennis, football and all the others because fit pupils learn better.

"But we also want to produce the elite players of the future and hope the next Tim Henmans and David Beckhams will come from Warminster.

"If you are going to produce high-quality sportsmen and women, you need high-quality sports facilities to train on in the local community."