A feeling of de-ja-vu pervades parts of this letter.

When Ilkley College closed, few realised the effect on local economy and services it would have. Student custom and revenue was lost. Not long after, small shops beloved of they and visitors closed their doors. The annual Northern Ballet Seminars, another source of revenue, were no more.

Some will say Ilkley is too upper to have a launderette but when its doors closed it left many not having home laundry facilities wanting.

What N Baxter wrote in a previous paper is very true. One doesn’t have to shop in Ilkley’s Tesco. However, traffic to the Skipton store doesn’t go through Ilkley’s overcrowded residential areas. It’s top water does not flow into a flood-prone beck. Skipton’s shopping area is greater than Ilkley’s and it takes its custom from a wider area.

Its station is on a main line not a terminus and it has the benefit of a canal, too. Had it not crossed N Baxter’s mind why the Ilkley store stopped selling those lines they can buy in Skipton? Sales techniques and business psychology work wonders on the unsuspecting shopper. Soon Ilkley will become like Burley, devoid of independent traders, devoid of character, devoid though not greatly in Burley’s case of visitors. It won’t be long before house prices fall.

You laugh! I wouldn’t! Look at other Tesco towns. How soon will we see Tesco – Gateway to the Dales? As if that wasn’t enough we are in danger of losing another service through lack of use – the Hopper service.

Conservation comes in many forms. One is using the Hopper service instead of the car. As many bus drivers keep pointing out with cuts looming the Hopper could be next. Many will say it’s a long walk from the upper reaches of town. Thirty years ago folk enjoyed their morning amble to the train, it kept them healthy, they saw their neighbours, the surrounding townscape, and equally on their return.

Years later they became lazy finding it too easy to roll out of bed into the car with short interludes between for shower and toast. Now double yellow lines adorn those areas early starters would use to block our roads, common sense should point to hopping on a Hopper. Thus keeping this hard fought for service running. If they go no amount of fighting will get them back and when the second car goes you really will have to walk.

Thomas Rothwell

Ilkley