All About Thornton

27 OCTOBER 2025 More on the Cycle lanes – my objection. These comments form an objection to the cycle lanes between the Thornton Road junction with Bell Dean Rad, and that with Springhead Road.

“Gear Change” and Government publications, before and since, give two reasons for why new cycles lanes segregated from other road users are needed.  One is to make cycling safer and thereby more attractive to current car users, and the other is to improve health thereby reducing demands on the NHS.

The aim of Active Travel England was that by 2030 50% of all journeys (of 5 miles or less in towns and cities) should be by walking, cycling, or wheeling.  Their website had that aim, but in the last few days it has replaced “50%” by the word “more”, which will not be so difficult to achieve.

Gear Change LTN 1/20 and other publications emphasise the need to engage with communities, including residents affected by segregated cycle lanes at an early stage in planning new cycle lanes.  While the WY Combined Authority on its website prides itself with the engagement it has held in relation to new cycle lanes, it confuses engagement with consultation.  There has been no engagement with either the residents of Thornton Road, or the wider community of Thornton, or with the parents who park up on Thornton Road to pick their children up from school. There has only been some consultation with people who live close to Thornton Road but not elsewhere in Thornton.

Active Travel England published in February 2025 its document on Best Practice for Consultation and Engagement which re-iterates the need for engagement, and it is not too late to halt the legal process and the published plans to engage with local residents, parents who park up, and the wider community. 

If engagement had taken place before the drawing up of the plans, there would have been a much better scheme.  If further research had been taken, those employees of Mott Macdonald who at the Fairweather Green consultation admitted they knew nothing about Bradford as they were based in Sheffield would have been better educated as to what was possible while keeping all affected on board.

If proper engagement and research had taken place it would have highlighted that on the south side of the road there are 84 dwellings, all the way down to the fields by Leaventhorpe Hall which separate Thornton from the urban area of Bradford, and then from Leaventhorpe Lane to more fields, compared with only 27 dwellings on the north side, with no dwellings along the side of School Green Recreation field, nor any after New Tyke public house, and dwellings just after Rhodesway.  In addition, they would have seen parents in cars waiting to take their children home, none of them in front of any residential areas, the large number of student leaving Beckfoot Thornton School at the close of the day at 3pm on Monday to Thursday, and 2.30pm on Fridays, those students who walk home up and down Thornton Road, and they would have seen the local amenities, which I mention later.

The reason only a handful, (3-5) of cyclists cycle up Thornton Road, from Bell Dean Road and Springhead Road is not to do with safety, but to do with gradient.  I have tried cycling up the footpath from Bell Dean Road towards Thornton, and found the gradient just too difficult. Pushing a bike uphill is difficult.

The reason people in Thornton are not going to leave their cars at home to cycle down Thornton Road is the fact that Thornton is built on a south facing steep hill.  Those who live near the top, are 100 metres higher than those that live near the bottom.  No one is going to dare to cycle down West Lane and James Street, even on an e-bike, hoping their brakes don’t fail before they get to Thornton Road, and no-one is going to attempt to pedal up those roads, or others like Alpine Rise, High Street (aptly named as it’s very steep) or any of the streets off Thornton Road.

People in Thornton are faced with hills to get anywhere.  They will not be using e-cargo bikes to get the weekly supermarket shop.  Walking down Thornton Road towards Bradford and back is not something which normal people do.  I have only walked that way when heavy snow has caused driving to be dangerous, and when no buses manage to get anywhere near Thornton.  For pleasure I prefer to walk to the north, west, and south of Thornton in the countryside where there’s fresh air, and interesting things to see.

A lot of money has already been wasted on the present proposals.  Let’s not waste any more by carrying them out.  It is not too late to halt the procedures and engage with local people. 

In relation to the formal orders: Both the Waiting, Loading and Parking Consolidation order and the Moving Traffic Consolidation Order have similar reasons for proposing to make the orders.

Reference in both supporting documents ii. For preserving or improving the amenities of the area through which the road runs; and iii. for avoiding danger to persons or other traffic using the road or any other road or for preventing the likelihood of any such danger arising.

The current amenities include: The ability to park on that part of driveways which are beyond the boundary of houses, while being off the road, the ability to park on Thornton Road and School Green, the ability for passing traffic to park close to School Green newsagents and convenience store, nearby bus stops, although many are without shelters, the mature trees, and daffodils, plus the green areas of School Green recreation ground and the fields from Old Road to Bell Dean which separate Thornton from the urban area of Bradford.

Parents can park on both sides of Thornton Road to take their children home to the higher parts of Thornton, and those areas which do not have a frequent bus service or have no bus service, and to homes in parts of the urban area of Bradford, outside of the school’s catchment area.

Except for the recreation area and the fields which separate Thornton from the urban area, on both sides of Thornton Road, all these amenities would be lost if these orders went ahead, contrary to item ii.  So local amenities will neither be preserved or improved.

Item iv (for) improving facilities for local people and for business, including “the provision of suitable and adequate parking facilities on and off the highway” … having regard to a) the desirability of securing and maintaining reasonable access to premises ….” 

The prohibition of parking both on and off the highway cannot be justified.  Apart from cyclists, pedestrians and public service vehicles, no consideration has been given to other road users, who have a genuine need to use the road, to get to their place of work, to visit their friends and family who live on Thornton Road, to get to another destination, and / or to pick up their children from school.

As previously commented, there would be no reasonable access to School Green Newsagents and Store if passing traffic is not able to park.  With the banning of parking in School Green itself, it is likely that the planned lay-by would be full of local cars, even if there would be restrictions of how long people could park there.   

The only improvement would be that of improving the safety of the handful of cyclists who are young and fit enough to cycle up Thornton Road each week, but that could be achieved without residents losing existing amenities.

While it is accepted that where a road is narrowed because the cycle lane is built on part of the carriageway, parking is not allowed on the road, which may be the case between City Road and Lane Ends Close, it is not the case between the junction with Bell Dean Road and Springhead Road, where there is no physical narrowing of the road, so there is no justification for prohibiting parking on both sides of the road. No justification has been made to restrict Waiting, Loading and Parking on that stretch of Thornton Road.

23 JULY 2025

Thornton Road “Improvement Scheme, and the West Bradford “Cycle Super Highway”. Because the Survey from the undemocratic and unaccountable West Yorkshire Combined Authority has few “free text” areas, I sent the following comments to the Bradford Council officers who have had a hand or two in designing the disastrous scheme. I doubt that they will like most of them.

1.  Cutting down 29 mature healthy trees is pure vandalism, akin to, but worse, than the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree.  At least its perpetrators could claim their act was due to drunken stupidity.  Trees are greener than bicycles.  They absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. They provide shelter from heavy rain and prevent flash flooding.  They reduce both direct and indirect UV radiation exposure.  They are hosts to hundreds of species of insects, many of which are food sources for bats and birds.  Birds and bats roost in trees, and bats hibernate in them.  To say that in place of the 29 mature trees, the scheme will see more planting shows naivety and ignorance about the difference between saplings, young trees and mature trees. 
2.  The scheme has no reference to the increase in height of Thornton Road.  Only the fittest younger people can cycle up it because of the gradient.  I tried 20 years ago, cycling up the pavement, with little success, walking, pushing my bicycle up most of the hill.  The attached Excel file shows that Thornton Road from City Road to West Park Road is undulating but goes from 116.0 metres above sea level to 139.3 metres, and stays around that height until by Jesse Street where it has risen to 144.5 metres, and on to 159.1 metres near to the junction of Rhodesway and Thornton Road.  It then rises to 219.5 metres at Springhead Road.  That rise from Rhodesway to Springhead Road is 60.5 metres, or the equivalent of 14 double-decker buses stacked vertically on top of each other.  I then show other heights in Thornton itself to show the fallacy in believing that the new cycle lanes will attract anyone extra from the village.
3.  The other so-called improvements include the “formalisation” of parking on Thornton Road above the west end of Leaventhorpe Lane by the school.  In this case formalisation means reducing the number of spaces.  Where will the displaced cars go?  There appears not to have been a survey of those who park there to take their children home.  I suspect some Beckfoot Thornton students are taken home because since they enrolled at the school the family has moved further away.  Some will be from Back Heights, Pit Lane, Headley, Squirrel, and Alderscholes Lane which are not near bus routes. Others will be from Denholme, and parts of Bradford.  Some will be lazy, unlike the large numbers who walk home at the end of the school day.  Others will be taken home to fit in with family timetables.  Reducing spaces is a King Canute type of action which won’t work; side streets and Leaventhorpe Lane will see the displaced cars.
4.  The current Government’s policy in respect of cycling and walking appears to be a continuation of the policies of the last Government.  Active Travel England appears to have taken on the policies in Gear Change.  It includes the desire to make people healthier by cycling or walking journeys of less than five miles, whether to the shops, entertainment venues, friends or just a walk in the countryside. LTN 1 of 2020 states: “Cycle infrastructure should be designed for significant numbers of cyclists… Our aim is that thousands of cyclists a day will use many of these schemes.” What is clear because of the challenging gradient and because Thornton is built on a hillside, there is unlikely to be ten more cyclists using cycle lanes on Thornton Road.

5.  It’s interesting that LTN 1 of 2020 has no examples of cycling on hills, nor do later Department of Transport and ATE publications. The schemes are intended to reduce car travel within urban areas, where the start and finish of a trip is wholly within the urban area. The policy concentrates on cities and larger towns.  The Thornton settlement area is totally surrounded by open fields, which makes the area sub-urban, not urban.

6.  I have no objection to the School Green cyclops junction except for the proposal to make vehicles exiting from Allerton Lane to use Old Road, which would lead to a road safety hazard at Old Road’s junction with Thornton Road; or to use Hoyle Ing Road, which is in a residential area, as is that part of Old Road.  Hoyle Ing Road should be made into a Play Street / Living Street, similar to Dutch woonerven .

7.  The proposal for banning left turns from Thornton Road to Allerton Road is strange.  Where will the displaced traffic go?  Why do vehicle drivers turn left there?  Answer is to go to Bradford Royal Infirmary and in future to the yet to be built leisure centre on Squire Lane. Instead vehicles will use the narrower residential road of Olive Grove and Bull Royd Lane, or rat-run via Shuttleworth Lane and Sunningdale to Rhodesway.
8.  However, it’s fair to say that cyclists should be separate from both pedestrians and motor vehicles.  My last cycle ride was in Utrecht city centre in the Netherlands about 18 years ago.  I’ve since injured a nerve in my leg which prevents me from cycling.  So how can we do this without causing the disaster of the current plans?  Taking away the current on-road cycle lanes will make the accessible road width 2 metres wider.  Within the centre of the road are either physical islands or thermoplastic strips effectively narrowing the road.  That width plus the previous 2 metres could be used, by creating one two-way cycle lane on the north side of Thornton Road by building out into the carriageway.  It is not beyond the wit of highway engineers to devise a scheme which would need alterations to drainage and probably camber.  The cycle lane would not only be separate from the highway by a high kerb, but could include planters as extra protection.  Such a scheme would not need masses of yellow lines nor disturbance for residents, or the felling of one tree, nor the loss of habitat for birds, insects and bats with whom we share our planet.

Glossary: ATE = Active Travel England, a Government department within the Department of Transport. Gear Change : A bold Vision for Cycling and Walking, with a foreword by Boris Johnson, then P.M., gives details of a change in policy to make cycling safer. LTN 1 of 2020, Local Transport Note of January 2020 is 188 pages long (I’ve read them all), and gives highway engineering solutions in the building of separate cycle lanes. The heights above sea level were taken from current Ordnance Survey maps. The maps are shown on Historic England’s map search of Listed buildings at Https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/map-search Woonerven is the plural of the Dutch word Woonerf ( I passed an exam in the Dutch language set by the University of the Hague about twenty five years ago.) The English equivalent of a Woonerf is a living street where pedestrians have priority over cycles, cars and other vehicles.

9 JUNE 2023

Shillicake, the Gazetteer, and a busy weekend

A new location has been entered, that’s Shillicakes in the Directory of Places, S to Z. I’m going through the entries in the Directory of Places and giving more information from the British Newspaper Archive.

In the Diary of Events the weekend of 24 and 25 June is becoming busy with Thornton Open Gaardens on each day, the annual local history exhibition provided by Thornton Antiquarian Society, the launch of a new book, Thorntichronicon, by Daniel Shiel at Thornton Community Centre, Ally Cats Summer Fair, Collage Club at South Square. There’s also Thornton Cricket Club 2nd XI playing at home versus Queensbury on the Saturday, and the first team playing at home versus Oxenhope in the 3rd round of the Halifax Cricket League’s Parish Cup, both at the Hill Top ground.

6 JUNE 2023

Why is the Council proposing to allocate land in Thornton for 566 dwellings between 2021 and 2038? Who made that decision?

I was saddened to read in a recent election leaflet from one of our councillors that she was saying it’s because the Government is forcing Bradford Council to build more houses in Thornton, which is not the case. I was saddened because that councillor is one of the 7 members of the Council’s Executive committee, a committee which makes all policy decisions in Bradford.

It’s true that all governments since Clement Atlee’s post-war Labour Government require councils to produce a local plan, showing allocations for housing, employment. recreation, transport, and other uses. To quote Wikipaedia “The objective of planning land use is to influence, control or direct changes in the use of land so that it is dedicated to the most beneficial use and maintains the quality of the environment and promoting conservation of the land resources. ”

Over the years there have been different regulations concerning how the Land-use local plans are compiled. Ironically the present regulations were passed by the last Labour Government. National statisticians work out population trends in each local authority area, and that shows how many new dwellings need to built in the local plan area. It doesn’t say where those houses shoud be built as that’s a local decision. Under those regulations there are a series of Development Plan Documents, with probably the most important being the Core Strategy. This was examined by a senior Planning Inspector at the request of the Secretery of State, and a few amendments were made, before it was agreed by Bradford Council’s Executive Committee. It stated that 700 extra dwellings would be built in Thornton. That figure has been reduced to 566 due to some new developments in Thornton, and a revised figure of proposed local population growth.

The Council compiled the Bradford District Draft Local Plan Preferred Options in February 2021 and invited comments. That part concerning Thornton is on this website . The remaining stages for the Local Development Plan are:

• Submission Stage – the Council submits its Plan to the Planning Inspectorate for examination

• Examination In Public – A Planning Inspector will be appointed by the Government to scrutinise the plan, listen to alternative viewpoints in a series of public hearings, and determine whether the plan is sound

• Adoption of the Plan – This will occur after receipt of the Inspectors report

It is believed that the Council will release the Submission stage document this year.

The plans are compiled by the Council’s Strategic Planning Officers. The Local Development Plan documents run to thousands of pages. The Core Strategy alone is 401 pages. While everyone appears to think that Brownfield Land should be developed before Greenfield and Green Belt, the sites of Dole and Prospect Mills remain undeveloped. The draft proposals for developing vacant sites in Bradford’s 3 constituencies says that only half of them should be for dwellings.

Strategic planners don’t like linear development, that is development along existing roads. They prefer filling existing open land within settlements with new housing, land like the fields to the north of Thornton Road, between Dalemoor and the Cemetery, behind existing houses on Albion Place and Thornton Road. Land off Hill Top Road, bought from Abe Shaw for extensions to the allotments, is another area they’d like to see housing. Other land, including some Green Belt land on the Hill Top side of the Cemetery is earmarked.

Two other important factors are Green Belt Policy and the Community Infrastructure Levy. The Green Belt is being reviewed, slowly. The Council has so far agreed the methodology for the Review. The Community Infrastructure Levy was another initiative of the last Labour Government to apply to all developments of more than 15 dwellings. It largely replaced Section 106 which allowed Councils to charge developers to assist in extra school places, road building and recreation. The Levy is a fixed amount per square metre of developnent. In Ilkley it’s at a rate of £100 a square metre. Thornton has been put, by the Council in Zone 4, where the charge is £0 per square metre, encouraging developers to build in Zone 4.