Fair share of highway spending to fix potholes in Keighley and Ilkley is needed - Robbie Moore

This is perhaps one of the most important issues that all of us, as MPs, get correspondence about. Why? Because it impacts us each and every day, whether we are commuting to work or simply getting out and about in the car to go and do things. We all care about the state of our roads right outside our door.

Take Elliott Street, which runs through the centre of Silsden in my constituency. I was first contacted by residents on this major road years ago, and the situation was poor then.

Over the last few years, it has only got worse, to the extent that people on social media described the state in which Labour-run Bradford Council had left the road as a mere joke. Despite having consistently raised the matter with Bradford Council, it took years for the council to finally get on with it.

I am pleased that in just the last two weeks, the resurfacing works have now finished. The works are welcome - of course they are - but residents on Elliott Street and across the wider Silsden area should not have had to wait years for such a busy and important road to be repaired.

Elliott Street is just one example. There are similar stories in Keighley, on Westburn Avenue, on Oakworth Road, on Halifax Road and on North Street - the list goes on. In Ilkley, we have a difficult junction at the top of the Cowpasture Road, north of Ilkley grammar school. Local Conservative councillors David Nunns and Andrew Loy have consistently lobbied Bradford Council to look at this dangerous junction.

In the Worth valley, the sides of Hill House Edge Lane are crumbling, with cars getting stuck in the ditches as they pass one another. Again, local Conservative councillors Rebecca Poulson, Chris Herd and Russell Brown have consistently lobbied Labour-run Bradford Council to sort the issue out, but no repairs have been undertaken.

When Bradford council does spend money on roads in my patch, the question is: does it actually spend that money on what people want it to be spent on? Of course it does not.

When Bradford council spent more than £100,000 - with an £87,500 contribution from Ilkley town council - on roads in Ilkley, we got speed humps and a blanket 20 mph zone, rather than getting our potholes addressed.

In a parish council referendum on this very issue, 98.3 per cent of people in Ilkley opposed the roll-out of way over 100 speed bumps in the centre of Ilkley. If you asked anyone in Ilkley what they would like from a good proportion of the 200 grand being spent on our roads, they would say, quite rightly: ‘Fix the potholes and sort out that junction at the top of Cowpasture Road’.

In Keighley and Ilkley we deserve our fair share, but Bradford Council is unfortunately more than happy to allocate our council tax and any central Government funds that come into the Bradford district not to the roads in Keighley and Ilkley, Silsden or the Worth valley, but instead to Bradford city itself. It is about time we had our fair share of highway spending across our constituency of Keighley and Ilkley.

An abridged version of a speech by Robbie Moore Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley and Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), in the House of Commons.