Residents of Ilkley are angry that the town is included in the Bradford lockdown

Residents of the spa town are disappointed that they have been included in the lockdown - which covers the entire district administered by Bradford Council - because of its distance from the city centre.

Despite Ilkley and Addingham having lost 35 residents to Covid-19 between March and June, local councillors have been informed by public health officials that the current case rate in the town is low and that the spring outbreaks were concentrated in care homes for the elderly.

A group of residents have asked the council to display an e-petition calling for Bradford to be exempted from the lockdown rules - which have also been imposed on Calderdale and Kirklees - on their website, but it has not yet been accepted.

Coun Anne Hawkesworth, who represents Ilkley on Bradford Council, believes the announcement was particulary galling for Ilkley because many residents had already been avoiding busy areas and human contact due to the large number of visitors who have been gathering at the pebble beaches in warm weather.

She now feels locals may be even more at risk, because they are more likely to visit cafes and restaurants in the town centre to socialise now that they cannot have groups of relatives around to their home or garden.

"People here have already been doing what they should be doing - isolating and doing the right thing. They have been going out when they needed to, and have been having some aspect of a social life in their back gardens. I've set up four tables in my garden and have been having family round for strawberries and drinks.

"It seems bizarre, even crackers, that you can't do that any more. People are more likely to go to the cafes for a social life now, when you could argue that for people of a certain age, they would be better off not mixing much at all.

"Here in Ilkley, most of us have kept out of the way because of the influx of visitors to the river. It has caused a lot of angst and a group have now got this petition together.

"Our MP, Robbie Moore, believes the council made a request to the government for the lockdown to be placed on Bradford. The case rate in Ilkley is low - less than two people at the moment, I believe - and I have been told by the council's public health officers that the main bulk of the deaths were in care homes back in April."

However, Coun Hawkesworth accepts an exemption is unlikely, and feels instead that the situation has been badly managed.

"The reality is, there are no exemptions. You would have to go back to the government for that. I feel this is in our MPs' arena really, and that things have been badly managed.

"People in Ilkley were actually isolating more before this lockdown was announced than they are now. The fact that you can't have relations visit your garden makes people more likely to go into town - it's just not credible for Ilkley."

Several MPs representing 'blue wall' Conservative seats in the areas placed back into lockdown have linked the situation to a long-running campaign for rural areas such as Ilkley to be removed from Bradford Council control in favour of being governed by their own local authority or, in Ilkley's case, falling under Leeds City Council's jurisdiction. Councillors argue that Ilkley looks to Leeds for work, leisure and travel connections.

Robbie Moore, whose Keighley constituency includes Ilkley, said: “There is frustration that there are certain parts of the constituency that have not witnessed high rates or new cases, particularly the Wharfedale part of the constituency.

“I think it just needs to be much more geographically localised rather than just following the council authority boundaries. The thing is, the Keighley side has seen new cases Covid cases coming through, whereas the Ilkley side has not.

“What I certainly can’t advise is a full lifting of the restrictions, there are new cases showing in some parts, but not in other parts.”

Both Mr Moore and Shipley’s MP, Philip Davies, have been campaigning to split their constituencies from the Bradford Council area, and Mr Moore said the lockdown was yet another example of how the patches did not fit together.

In a column for the Bradford Telegraph and Argus newspaper, Mr Davies said: “The local lockdown that was imposed at the end of last week has made it more urgent than ever we separate from Bradford.

“The problem in the Bradford district with worrying levels of coronavirus infections is largely concentrated in Bradford itself, and yet places like Wharfedale and Baildon in my constituency have been included in the blanket lockdown thrown over the entire district, unnecessarily.

“If the Shipley and Keighley constituencies had their own local authority, rather than being part of Bradford, it is very likely that, like Leeds, we would not have had a lockdown imposed on us.”

Mr Moore also criticised the council's decision to reinstate parking restrictions in Ilkley which had been suspended during full lockdown in the spring.

One of the main arguments for 'devolution' is that areas such as Ilkley have larger numbers of residents who pay the highest rates of council tax, yet they feel that this is mainly invested in parts of urban Bradford which are geographically distant from the town. Similarly, Bradford's council tax income base would be considerably reduced if Ilkley and areas of Keighley ceded from the authority, leaving it economically worse off.

Bradford Council leader Coun Susan Hinchcliffe has also criticised politicians calling for Ilkley's exemption, arguing that its inclusion in the lockdown is justifiable and necessary.

“We want to work with the government to make sure that the regulations are followed and the infection rates come down. We should all be working towards that end. Arguing about whose responsibility these local restrictions are is therefore unhelpful and distracting to the effort of the nation and of the district to fight this virus.

"The truth of the matter is that as a district which has been consistently in the top five for infection rates in the country since the data first came out, Bradford Council is inevitably in conversation with the government. Naturally they want assurances from us that we are taking the virus seriously.

“However, it is a fact that Bradford Council has no powers to close any sector or any part of the district down. These are government powers that they exercise, decisions which they take without us in the room. Given our high infection rates, it would have been extraordinary for the government not to put restrictions on Bradford district but only to put restrictions on our neighbouring authorities, who have much lower infection rates.

"The big surprise announcement for us was the social restrictions affecting household mixing brought in with two hours’ notice. I heard about these first from Matt Hancock’s Sky News announcement.

“Keighley constituency has its own hot spots of infection. I believe Robbie Moore is speaking for only some parts of his constituency when he talks about 'low transmission rates' and is not referring to those parts of his constituency which have much greater degrees of infection, people who have had to work throughout the lockdown in front-line jobs, living in smaller houses with no gardens.

"This inevitably means they will be more vulnerable to infection. He seems to have no message or words of encouragement for the people in these wards with higher infection rates in his constituency, he only has words of support for those in more affluent parts of his constituency. Understandably these people are weary of Covid-19 but until we’ve all got low infection rates it’s not beaten yet."

The five postcode areas within the town of Keighley itself have had 42 Covid-19 deaths between March and June.

“Looking at the latest data, Keighley Oakworth Road and West Lane had more positive cases last week than Manningham and Undercliffe, in (inner-city) Bradford. Keighley constituency has a high number of Covid infections and we are asking the government for a permanent testing site there to help increase the accessibility for testing."