THE SIGNS are that speeding could be reduced in Silsden thanks to a local councillor.

Rebecca Whitaker, who sits on both Bradford and Silsden councils, has arranged for more than 20 warning signs to be erected around the town.

Ten of the informal signs have already been placed on lampposts and other places in danger-driver hotspots in the centre of Silsden.

Another dozen are on order from the council, and are likely to be placed further out of town on approach routes such as Keighley Road and Bolton Road.

Cllr Whitaker asked for the signs when she went on a ‘walkabout’ last autumn with the council’s Principal Highway Safety Engineer Simon D’Vali.

She said: “I welcome those signs, but there aren’t enough of them yet and they’re in the centre of Silsden.

“These signs are an interim measure but they’re better than nothing. They’re available, inexpensive and don’t have to wait for approval, so I thought it was better to have them.”

Cllr Whitaker said it was important to have signs on both sides of each of the two main roads in and out of Silsden.

She said: “When people are going up Bolton Road or out the other way on Keighley Road they put their foot down because they’ve been clogged up in the town centre.”

Cllr Whitaker went on another walkabout in recent workweeks, this time with another road safety officer.

She said: “We identified in detail what would be the best lampposts to put them on. We’ve done our best with limited resources to identify where to put them.”

Cllr Whitaker and the offices also checked that issues raised during her original walkabout were being dealt with by the right officers across Bradford’s various departments.

These issues included broken streetlights, faded road markings at locations including Clog Bridge, and parking issues in and around Kirkgate.

Cllr Whitaker added: “It’s a work-in-progress reporting and highlighting issues. There are so many different issues. They won’t be sorted overnight, but now they’ve been identified Bradford can sort them out.”

Cllr Whitaker said he had recently spoke to businesses in Kirkgate – the central road through Silsden – about the various options for increasing on-street parking without adversely affecting traffic flow.

Last month Kirkgate newsagent Martin Twigg demanded that yellow lines to be removed from the street alongside his shop.

He said customers needed to be able to park near his long-established shop in Kirkgate, but were often ticketed by enforcement officers for parking on single-yellow lines in adjacent New Road.

Cllr Whitaker carried out last autumn’s walkabout following several months working with parish and town councils across Craven ward to address highways issues.

She said that as more housing was built, congestion at peak times was becoming a huge problem across the ward.

She added: “Residents’ safety must be addressed as a priority.”

Other issues highlighted by Cllr Whitaker included the dangers of HGVs that “whizz past” on narrow Kirkgate and mount pavements, motorists driving in the wrong direction down one-way Briggate, parked cars at the bottom of Skipton Road causing difficulty for buses, and reduced visibility for drivers pulling out from side streets.