A DECISION to change which Silsden road will be repaired this year has been blasted by local councillor Adrian Naylor.

He claims the original road on the Bradford Council maintenance list, Wesley Place, is in a worse condition than its replacement, nearby St John’s Street.

Keighley Area Committee this month approved £251,000 of repairs on non-classified roads across the Keighley constituency areas over the next 12 months.

The priority list recommended by highways engineers included Wesley Place, which runs off Kirkgate towards a council car park.

The committee – made up of Bradford councillors representing Keighley and Ilkley wards – decided that St John’s Street, which runs alongside Silsden Beck, deserved to be on the list instead.

Councillor Naylor, who serves on both Bradford and Silsden councils, said town councillors had previously expressed concerns about the condition of Wesley Place.

He said: “Wesley Place is the entrance to the car park, so it’s more heavily used by cars. The road surface is likely to decay at a greater pace, in the professional opinion of the engineers.

“St John’s Street is technically a cul-de-sac. Both of them are in poor state, but if Wesley Place is held over for a year or two it will be in a far worse state. In St John’s Street, they could do some spot patching.”

Cllr Naylor last week criticised Bradford Council for earmarking most of this year’s £5.37 million road budget to A, B and C roads, leaving just £250,000 for non-classified roads in the Keighley constituency.

He said this funding strategy unfairly discriminated against roads in rural areas of the district.

A Bradford Council spokesman said the maintenance of A, B and C roads needed to be the highest priority as they carried the most traffic.

She said the highway network was made up of A roads (223 km urban, 61km rural), B roads (53km urban, 25km rural), C roads (59 km each urban and rural) and non-classified roads (1,245 urban and 217km rural).

She added: “Whilst officers recommend a priority list of schemes, ward councillors can and often do make substitutions from the ‘reserve’ list and the amount spent between wards on each classification of road tends to balance out over a number of years depending on the size of individual projects.”

During this month’s meeting, Keighley Area Committee approved 17 repair schemes totalling £251,000 in urban and rural parts of the constituency, including Oakworth, Laycock, Riddlesden, Oxenhope, Morton, Silsden Moor and Silsden, as well as central Keighley.