From: Cllr Karl Milner (in a personal capacity)

The threat of closure to Golden Butts Lane graphically illustrates an alarming erosion of our public services. I fear there will be more to come, libraries and leisure services have also been identified in recent statements about funding.

As a town, there are now two responses we can have, we can EITHER argue the toss over whether this is the fault of The Conservative Government v. Bradford OR we can park the usual blame game and try and salvage what we can. I am only really interested in the second. If district council funding is no longer available then alternative futures for affected services need to be investigated.

Golden Butts is a service which I believe is best delivered by the state. So would introducing a charge per use be an option that residents would consider. Would it be enough to save the tip. Or perhaps an increase in the local precept to support the service? All options must be fully investigated and consulted upon. If no solution can be found than the facility and site should be mothballed rather than disposed of, there might be a welcome change in the political weather later this year.

Other services might be better run and even owned by the local community. I would be fully in favour of exploring a community ownership model for services such as the Lido. I am confident that local people coming together as a community of interest could run this asset as well if not better than any District Council.