Working together, residents and councillors in Wharfedale achieve a better outcome for our villages.

On Tuesday, February 18, I observed Bradford Council’s Labour Executive meeting where they announced their budget for next year. I learned that our intervention had made a difference.

In November swingeing cuts were announced to both our local children’s centre and to our youth service provision. The Index of Multiple Deprivations was applied to decide which areas of Bradford should receive services as they said there wasn’t enough money to go around! Consequently our areas were perceived to have less need of Council services because we live in an affluent area! The proposal was to make Menston and Burley Children’s Centre an outreach centre with a receptionist but with no professional support. Likewise, Youth Services were going to be centred in the middle of Bradford and support for our young people was to be left to volunteers.

Since then Coun Dale Smith and I have campaigned with local people to protest against these unfair cuts and local people have had their say too. A petition of 625 names was collected by an ex-policemen called Gerry Barker. He and a mum who uses the children’s centre, Kathryn Wright, presented the petition at the January meeting of full Council. I made a speech reinforcing the point that young families wherever they are in Bradford should have a right to access a children’s centre and that perceived affluence should not be used as a tool to exclude a whole swathe of people from receiving much needed services.

Similarly, I made a speech in December in support of youth services in the district which was threatened with an 80 per cent cut. A district-wide petition with over 3,500 signatures was presented by the young people themselves. I said Bradford would be cutting off its nose to spite its face because youth services supports young people in their transition to adulthood and supports them to achieve the skills and confidence which help them to get on in life and hence is good for Bradford and our local economy.

Our intervention worked and Menston and Burley Children’s Centre has secured funding for the next 12 months and support from qualified youth workers will continue in our villages as there will now be a much smaller reduction in the youth services budget. I would like to thank everyone who supported the petitions. We can be proud of this achievement!

Councillor Jackie Whiteley, Conservative councillor for Wharfedale Ward

Tax hike cash could help children’s centre survive

I have been heartened in the past two weeks by the reaction to the proposal by the parish council to raise the precept by over 20 per cent, for the second time in a few years – from people I have talked to and in your pages.

And it has been overwhelmingly against. The deafening silence from the PC itself might tell its own story because, apart from Mike Gibbons’ “It’s only…”, the cry of the profligate politician through the ages, might this signal a change of heart?

Could it be that they have actually woken up to the fact that it would have been perfectly possible to get all those businesses who stand to benefit from the Tour to sponsor their less-than-ambitious little schemes?

I guess not, after all it’s only other people’s money. However, some good may yet come out of this. Next week’s PC meeting could agree to earmark the money raised by this hike to help the children’s centre in Little Lane survive next year, when the current arrangement runs out.

If our parish councillors had heard the despair and at times even desperate pleas from young mums in this area at the consultation meeting about the future of the centre, which I heard, then I doubt they would think twice about such a proposal.

There is a flawed concept at the heart of the changes which are being proposed at present; that it is only young mothers in areas of high social deprivation who need support in the early years. Without going into all the reasons why young mums of all social classes might need the sort of support and encouragement the centre can provide it might suffice to realise, for instance, that post-natal depression is no respecter of postcodes.

MP Kris Hopkins was right that this was the wrong call but the PC could do the right thing and earmark support for the centre for next year.

Sandy MacPherson, Ben Rhydding

Charity begins at home in Rotary floods collections

Concern, support and charity begins at home.

On Saturday, the Rotary Clubs of Wharfedale and llkley are combining to collect in store and on the street to acquire funds to help those who have suffered in the Somerset floods disaster. Our collectors can be readily identified by their Rotary tabards.

All money collected will be sent to the Rotary co-ordinator in Somerset to be allocated as they think best.

We have already contacted them to ask what projects they have in mind.

This does not mean that our efforts are over! Financial assistance will be needed for many months to come, especially once the media has lost interest, and the Ilkley Rotary Clubs will be requesting your aid during those months in a number of ways.

We know that the people of llkley and the surrounding districts will respond in the generous manner that we have come to expect and appreciate.

Please help us to assist those less fortunate than ourselves.

Keith Budd, honorary secretary, Ilkley Wharfedale Rotary Club

No acknowledgement of our major traffic problems

Yesterday I again witnessed a scene in Ilkley that is all too common. Cars parked either side of Bridge Lane had reduced it to single lane traffic and, inevitably, when a 4x4 in one direction met two saloons in the other, tempers flared.

The man in the 4x4 maintained that the two cars should reverse as he would have to reverse round a corner; saloon folk said it was easier to reverse one car for a short distance than two for longer. Fortunately, the dispute was resolved at the level of bad language, before fisticuffs.

This is all too common in this area – I have seen ambulances stuck on Bridge Lane – with those living here unwilling to use their cars at times because there will be nowhere to return to nearer than where they are going!

Ilkley is a major railhead and shopping site, but there seems to be no acknowledgement of this by the local authorities.

It is absurd that the station car park has around only 20 places, while the larger car park built on the station is let out to a rapacious private firm.

There is a site nearby that would be ideal for a large car park of at least two floors which might soon become available – but the current plan is that it is to be used for a care home, I believe. Instead, the powers that be declare the parking problem is “difficult”, and leave it at that.

If those authorities are going to continue not to address parking requirements, then they must at least address the traffic flow problems caused by their turning our many side streets into ad hoc car parks.

Otherwise, fisticuffs may become a regular solution.

Nick Beeson, Ilkley

Condition of road is at crisis point as potholes proliferate

I travel in to Ilkley every day from Harrogate and come along through Askwith on West Lane then Low Park Road and then Denton Road towards the rugby club. Some of this road is cared for by North Yorkshire County Council and some of it by Bradford.

The condition of the road is dreadful, it’s at a crisis stage. You have to avoid potholes in both directions on the edge of the road and in the middle; this stretch of road is used not just by motorists but ever-increasing cyclists.

The problem is cyclists and motorists have to ride in the middle of the road to avoid the dangerous potholes and sometimes can be very dangerous when both cyclists and cars swerve to avoid them – this is an accident waiting to happen – let’s get to the problem before it’s too late.

As a town that will be benefiting from the grand Tour in the summer will anything be done about this?

Lester Hurst, Hunters Property Group, Ilkley, Otley & surrounding areas

Last chance to have say on proposal for 1,600 houses

I hope that by now most of your readers are aware of the threat from Bradford Council’s proposals for 1,600 new houses in Wharfedale, 800 of them in Ilkley. We have one final opportunity to do something about this by making representations to the Council before March 31.

The process is rather awkward and the Ben Rhydding Green Belt Protection Group website has now been updated with advice on completing the official form and guidance on many of the relevant issues.

Everything is available in one place, including access to the representations form and the Council’s Local Plan documents. The website can be found at benrhydding.org, and further assistance is available by e-mail to contact@benrhydding.org.

Andrew Lund, Ben Rhydding Drive, Ilkley