I TAKE issue with the leader – Folly from Council (Keighley News, December 15) – the disparaging of people who spent years of unsalaried time working for the community and your cavalier disregard for the facts.

Firstly, the town council campaigned vigorously against the closure of the North Street police station.

It was four years after closure that the town council purchased and restored a building, which by then had grass growing in the guttering and a tree taking root on the roof and was rapidly becoming a decaying hulk on a significant site in the town centre.

The aim was to bring back into use a ‘flagship’ town centre building, which because of the restrictions of the Chatsworth Estate covenant, could only be used for police or civic purposes; by creating an office base for the council, a new police museum visitor attraction and a community hub for general public use.

And, a highly significant point that has conveniently been forgotten, the restoration of the North Street building to form the civic centre was the critical factor in Bradford Council gaining the Townscape Heritage Initiative, which has so much improved the appearance of North Street, High Street and Church Street, and provided the York stone pavements along North Street, again partly funded by the town council.

The critics of the town council have never accepted that without the vision of those now retired councillors whom you denigrate, the old North Street building would by now be a derelict shell, as much of an embarrassment to the town as the college buildings opposite, with similar arguments in your columns as to its future.

GRAHAM MITCHELL Keighley Mayor 2006/07 and 2014/15