The first dedicated Parkour centre in East Anglia has opened in Witham.

Kinetix Academy, run by Team Kinetix, officially opened for the first time on Saturday in Freebournes Industrial Estate, in Moss Road.

The new, specially designed venue will ensure participants have somewhere to practice in a safe and controlled environment all year round.

Brad Wendes, director of Team Kinetix and an elected director of Parkour UK, said: "Essex has one of the biggest Parkour communities in the UK and we’ve been looking to have a dedicated centre here for some time.

"We already have 350 unique sign-ups for the new centre since announcing our plans through social media two weeks ago so we have high hopes for the future.”

Last year the UK became the first country to officially recognised Parkour as a sport.

Mr Wendes said: "We’ll be open 10am to 10pm each day, running four or five classes a day with open sessions either side.

"Although it’s a non-competitive sport, we will run a level-based syllabus and will have classes for a variety of ages, including pre-schoolers.

"We’ve been working with a special needs school and a referral unit for a few years now so we would hope to expand our school-based work over time as well.”

Estate agents Fenn Wrights helped secure the premises, which have been completely refitted for Team Kinetix.

Visit www.teamkinetix.co.uk.