Letter to the Keighley News

29 June 2019

Your front-page lead on June 13 was all about the withdrawal of plans to build a multi-million pound industrial park in Keighley.

It has quotes from two district councillors, Khadim Hussain and Zafar Ali, and John Grogan MP, saying how unfortunate the news was about this £60 million scheme.

I take a totally different view.

I too was at the business-community meeting at Keighley College (in 2017, not 2016) when this development was discussed.

I said at the time that houses on stilts belonged in Thailand, not Keighley, and questioned the wisdom of a 300-car multi-storey car park at the edge of a flood plain.

This plan was rejected by Keighley Town Council twice and only approved last year by the Bradford Council regulatory and appeals committee.

As a self-confessed “off-cumden”, I knew about the local tradition of building on flood plains (Airedale Hospital, where pumps in the basement run 24/7, and the new Saxon Dene building project at Silsden, raising the level of the houses built at the former ice cream factory at Cononley), but I cannot see the point.

A brownfield site like the one planned for the Stainsby Grange development off East Parade would not have any flooding issues, but is nevertheless a derelict wasted site; the former Keighley College building on Cavendish Street is due for demolition, and there is a large open space next to it right in the centre of town.

So where are the developers with imagination, just when the town needs them?

MARTIN WALKER

Wood View Road

Oakworth