SIR - I feel obliged to put pen to paper about the recent events with the NEC and their withdrawal from the Bradford Live project, though to most it comes as no surprise having regard to Bradford Council’s poor track record in the 21st Century.

Cast your mind back to the Westfield (now Broadway) Shopping Centre, the site for which was demolished in 2006 with hopes its doors would open in 2007. Despite the Council banging its drums, the scheme was mothballed by the Australian developers who built centres first in Derby and Stretford.

The Westfield Broadway project seen in an archive image from 2014, when the project had stalled and residents bemoaned the 'hole in the ground'The Westfield Broadway project seen in an archive image from 2014, when the project had stalled and residents bemoaned the 'hole in the ground' (Image: T&A) Bradford Council was left for 10 years with no Council tax income from a valuable city centre site, and just a hole in the ground until the centre finally opened in 2015.

The list goes on - look at the delays and additional costs when St George’s Hall was refurbished, the fiasco over the Richard Dunn Sports Centre left empty for so long and now the continued delay in completing the new Darley Street Market with related additional costs.

The contracts for these schemes seem worthless, legally unenforceable and full of loopholes hardly something to be proud of.

The Bradford Live scheme in the foreground with City Hall in the backgroundThe Bradford Live scheme in the foreground with City Hall in the background

Are these events now an embarrassment to both elected members and council officers? Have they been naïve or at worst incompetent and not up to their jobs?

Meantime we taxpayers pick up the tabs and have no redress, unlike shareholders in a company situation when heads would have rolled and individuals held to account.

Now we have the Kirkgate Shopping Centre emptying for demolition and the planned City Village to take its place. The original market was built in 1872, demolished in 1973 and the new Arndale Centre built and opened in just three years in 1976 by a then competent Council under the leadership of a strong Chief Executive, Gordon Moore. Potential City villagers do not hold your breath!

As a retired commercial property and planning solicitor and former Bradford Councillor, I feel suitably qualified to express these views.

Tony Emmott, Old Bridge Rise, Ilkley