I WRITE in reply to Paul Moore’s interesting letter regarding socialising, eating and drinking in Keighley town centre.

Mr Moore is right to identify a general lack of interesting places to meet; the reasons for that are not hard to find.

How many quality pubs, bars and restaurants are there in town? Not that many.

How many scenes of urban dereliction? How many aggressive heroin addicts? How many aggressive beggars? How many aggressive street drinkers, seated under a ‘No Anti-Social Drinking’ notice?

Worse of all, a gang of feral children looking to thieve and rob at every opportunity.

Who in their right mind would invest time, money and effort in a place like this?

Many years ago, West Yorkshire Police (WYP) paid some attention to Keighley, but once the police station in North Street closed and moved out of town, that attention dwindled away to almost nothing.

WYP quotes a “lack of resources”, but can still find 400 policemen to contain an EDL march through the town.

I can’t help but think the cost of that operation, spent on trying to deal with some of the severe social and racial problems in the town, would have given the EDL no reason to come to Keighley in the first place.

Where do we go from here?

A leisure centre on the site of the old college may sound good but let’s be honest, it’s not going to happen.

Better, perhaps, for Bradford Council and Keighley BID to support smaller-scale schemes – café-bars, small restaurants etc – but, please, no more takeaways.

So, we require action from West Yorkshire Police to clean the town up, then Bradford Council to support investment and the two of them to continue a co-ordinated policy for as long as it takes to regenerate Keighley.

Simples, as the meerkats say.

BOB BROWN Church Green, Keighley