Date for poll over future of Keighley site; and your letters on the issue

All registered electors, around 43,000, can participate.

The former college site at the junction of North Street and Cavendish Street is earmarked for a multi-million pound health and wellbeing centre, but the scheme has divided opinion.

Backers say it will provide a massive boost to healthcare provision in the town, regenerating the plot and bringing jobs into central Keighley.

However campaigners are calling for the site to be retained as an open area, and the 'health hub' built on an alternative brownfield plot.

Three questions will be put to the electorate: Do you want a health and wellbeing hub in Keighley? Do you want a health and wellbeing hub on the vacant land at the corner of North Street & Cavendish Street? Should the vacant land at the corner of North Street & Cavendish Street be recognised as a public open space?

The poll, called following a parish meeting, will be overseen by Bradford Council but the bill picked-up by Keighley Town Council. The cost is currently unknown.

Polling stations will be open between 4pm and 9pm.

* The Keighley News has received a number of letters regarding the former college site. The below is a selection:

WHAT on earth is going on? Is Keighley Town Council made of money? The poll it is planning at the behest of a small group of ‘green spacers’ is estimated to cost in the region of £40,000. All this because a plan that came about through the auspices of Bradford Council was taken exception to by some residents and orchestrated by MP Robbie Moore in his persistent attempts to undermine our council.

The green space will become a health and wellbeing centre for the people of the town. It has been agreed with the NHS and the old college site is the only practical one and at the best price possible – nothing!

All this comes at a time when our GP services locally are under huge pressure and being reduced – I can’t see the Oakworth Surgery ever reopening for example.

If Keighley Town Council has to waste £40,000 please use it to do something for all the people of Keighley, not a few ‘green spacers’.

Martin Burgess, Oakworth

* Town mayor, Cllr Luke Maunsell, says: "The parish poll was called by a meeting of electors, not the town council. The town council doesn't have the power to call one.

"The cost is yet to be confirmed, but £40,000 is normally the cost of a full election with postal votes and poll cards – that doesn't apply in a public poll, and the stations will only be open for five hours between 4pm and 9pm."

I READ the input from Nick Smith regarding the so-called green space.

What no one has considered is how do people get to this hub?

Take a look at the geography – it's virtually on an island. Have you ever tried to get over there from either Wetherspoon's, or the library, or Scott Street car park, where everyone wanting to visit will have to park? Or from the area of the war memorial, or tried to run the gauntlet over any of the crossings? And the majority of people wishing to go to the hub will be elderly.

Nobody in the town is against a hub, only where they want to build it. A brownfield site in the town would be far more convenient. My thoughts would be because we have waited so long, another couple of years won't make any difference, so why not wait until Aldi has built its new supermarket and use the old one – extended of course, up one or two storeys; there's a big car park and everyone knows where it is.

Malcolm Balmforth, Keighley

AS a retired medical doctor, I welcome a new health and wellbeing hub in Keighley but I am deeply concerned about the proposal to build this on the vacant land – otherwise known colloquially as the green space – next to the junction of North Street and Cavendish Street.

This is a very busy junction, with congestion resulting in excessive traffic air pollution. Should the hub be built here, it will require a car park for its projected 200 jobs, plus all its visitors – probably 300 car parking spaces in total. The entrance to this car park would clearly have to be at the Alice Street/North Street junction. This is only 330 feet from the entrance to St Anne's Catholic Primary School.

The current air pollution level outside Wetherspoon's is in the red – on the 75th percentile – and exceeds three WHO limits. At the entrance to St Anne's Primary, the level is in the orange zone – on the 59th percentile – still exceeding three WHO limits but somewhat less (measurements are taken from the website airpollution.org).

It is now well known and universally acknowledged that air pollution increases the incidence of childhood asthma and exacerbates symptoms of asthma and COPD in all age groups. Most recently, Professor John Wright – the director of Bradford Institute for Health Research, who set-up the Born in Bradford cohort study in 2007 – announced there is now clear evidence that traffic pollution also harms the brain development of young children. He commented that "the evidence of the toxic nature of the emissions coming out of car exhausts has become overwhelming. These are invisible poisons that we churn out into our pure Yorkshire air every day, harming the lives of our children. Living near green space is linked to better performance due to reduced pollution in these areas."

Bradford Council must be fully aware of these studies from the Bradford Institute for Health Research. Indeed the council is introducing a (limited) Clean Air Zone in the city centre this very September and are suggesting banning cars in some streets containing schools. I congratulate them wholeheartedly for this. So why, oh why, are they so intent on increasing traffic air pollution so close to St Anne's Catholic Primary School? Because that is what will happen. The worst contributor of traffic air pollution is slow and idling traffic churning out particulate matter, as well as toxic gases, and this is precisely what will be created by the hub being built on the vacant land next to the junction of North Street and Cavendish Street. It will worsen queues approaching the traffic lights at this junction and create new queues tailing back from Alice Street right past St Anne's Catholic Primary School. The levels there will rise into that red zone outside Wetherspoon's and possibly even exceed it. This will not promote health and wellbeing but instead will harm it. It would be reckless, irresponsible and indeed hypocritical of Bradford |Council to push ahead with this project on this current preferred site as a result.

The proposed new building will not fit in with Keighley's Victorian Conservation Area either, as it happens, and there are far more suitable derelict and alternative sites which remain close to the town centre.

The electors of Keighley now have a unique chance to make their views known on this matter in a town poll occurring very shortly. I would urge all eligible voters to turn out and vote for what they feel is best, but when they do to bear in mind the future health of all the children in that large primary school.

Dr Alison Harrop, Oakworth

* A spokesperson for Bradford Council said: "We welcome dialogue to ensure we work together to develop a Keighley that builds on its unique strengths and is a place – with the right facilities – where people want to live, work and visit.

"However, like a lot of the debate around the health and wellbeing centre, the writer of this letter has provided views based on an inaccurate understanding. Firstly, the number of parking spaces anticipated is 40 to 50 – not 300. There is a public car park just a few yards away, so there is no need for large numbers of parking spaces.

"Secondly, air quality in Keighley is within World Health Organisation targets. The council has an automatic air quality monitoring station on North Street, Keighley. The annual average nitrogen dioxide concentration for 2021 was 22 ugm3 against the legal limit of 40ugm3.

"Annual average concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in 2021 were 7 ugm3 against the WHO target level of 10 ugm3, which is also the standard to be achieved under the Environment Act by 2040.

"These levels are expected to reduce further with the introduction of the Clean Air Zone (CAZ) in Bradford in September 2022. Whilst Keighley is not in the CAZ, the improvement in vehicle emissions will have a positive impact in Keighley and all wards in the district."

HAVING attended a residents' meeting at the civic centre on June 22 to discuss Keighley parish issues – predominantly the redevelopment of the brownfield site (old college building) – and heard the town mayor and chair of the meeting's opening statement where he said the meeting would be democratic and everyone would have an opportunity to be heard, this meeting was everything but democratic.

The meeting started around 20 minutes late, due to being “registered” and issued with slips to vote.

The chair allowed around eight people to speak with passionate and personal statements, made both for and against the development. Of those who spoke, three were town councillors, one a Bradford district councillor and three other residents – with one proposing a Keighley poll, seconded by a town councillor.

Following these circa eight people's comments and 20 minutes of the meeting, the chair announced: "I have heard enough and I have decided that a poll will be held".

The chair at the start of the meeting and during it stated he was a democrat and the meeting would be democratic, so why did the chair not ask for a show of hands to get a democratic vote on a poll?

Having heard and seen written statements over the years that Bradford Council does not listen and forces its views on Keighley, the chair – our town mayor – did exactly that. He should have remained neutral and allowed the residents to vote on the poll and make this decision, not impose his decision based on his views, eight people's comments and possibly influences from other town councillors.

I am not sure who or how many people had requested this meeting, or the process to call it, but in my view it was stage-managed and the residents were manipulated.

Less than 3,000 people signed a petition to keep the brownfield site a green space, their petition was heard by Bradford Council.

Following due process Bradford Council decided not to agree with this and is supporting a much-needed and long overdue redevelopment of this site.

Many people will not know that this site has been on the market for anyone to purchase for over a decade. The sale and site redevelopment was critical and part of the funding for our new Keighley College, which was needed and is an asset to the town.

The wellbeing hub is a much-needed investment in Keighley and will provide an improved health service offer. It will create around 60 new jobs, centralising services within a four-minute walk of the town centre and bus station and hopefully kickstart Keighley’s redevelopment – along with the extra footfall and potential customers it will bring to the town for the local stores and cafes. I am concerned that a small group – less than five per cent of Keighley residents, supported by our MP and some town councillors – will delay the investment, redevelopment and improved health service this project will bring.

To that end, when the poll happens, please research the facts and information and make your own informed decision.

Keighley deserves better and has not seen investment since the new college was built – and this building and everything it will house will make a positive impact.

Steve Seymour, Keighley

* Town mayor, Cllr Luke Maunsell, responds: "Whilst I respect Mr Seymour's views, I must correct him on several points.

"First of all, I did delay the start of the meeting as people were queuing outside the building to get in. It wasn’t a town council meeting but a meeting of electors, as such it was important that electors could be identified should the need arise to take any votes.

"During the meeting, over 20 people spoke, both in favour and against development on the green space. This did include some town and district councillors but the vast majority of speakers were residents who wanted to have their say. I note that Mr Seymour didn’t ask to speak, had he done so, he could have made his point of view to the meeting.

"It is also clear Mr Seymour doesn’t understand the process required for a parish poll to be called. Once a poll has been called for, the only decision for the meeting is the wording of questions. These were agreed unanimously by the meeting.

"My job at the parish meeting was to facilitate the debate and make sure the meeting was conducted in an orderly manner. It wasn’t my place to impose my views on the meeting. I worked hard to allow a wide variety of views to be heard and challenged people from all sides of the debate who crossed the lines of reasoned argument.

"I also stand by the calling of the meeting in the first place. Sufficient numbers of electors approached me wanting the meeting to be held. As a democrat, I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to prevent this nor did I have the power to do so.

"Ultimately, I am proud of how many turned out for that meeting, I am proud of how engaged people have become on this issue and I hope people from across the town take part when the parish poll is held to get their voices heard. Like Mr Seymour, I would like an informed debate on this and now the public has another avenue to have one.

"For me, more democracy can only be a good thing even you disagree with the outcomes of it."