JANUARY

Bradford City beat Aston Villa 3-1 in the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final.

Morrisons Christmas sales fall by 2.5 per cent over a six-week period compared with results last year. The supermarket group signs a multi-million pound promotional advertising and sponsorship deal with ITV presenters Ant and Dec.

Bradford Council got nearly £1m from car parking charges in 2012, it is revealed.

Ilkley Conservative councillor Anne Hawksworth resigns from the Tory Group at City Hall to join the Independents.

Bradford Council is to get £31.5m from the Department of Health for a two-year programme to promote healthy living and illness prevention schemes.

In six months BRI’s innovative £2m Da Vinci surgical robot has carried out 26 bladder and prostate operations.

Bradford Council is to to build four Extra Care homes, a step up from sheltered housing, at a cost of more than £24m, in Thackley, Saltaire, Goitside in Bradford and Airedale.

The 2014 British start of the Tour de France will pass through Otley, Skipton, Bolton Abbey, Silsden, Haworth and Keighley, it is announced.

Persistent snow causes delays and disruptions.

In their return match against Aston Villa, Bradford City lose 2-1 but go through to Wembley 4-3 on aggregate - the first time for 50 years that a team from the lowest division of the Football League has reached a Wembley Cup Final.

Discovery Music Store on Westgate, Bradford’s last independent music shop, is to close after 30 years.

Bradford Earthquake, an independent report into Labour’s humiliation at the 2012 Bradford West by-election, cites complacency, clan politics, taking voters for granted and all-round under-estimation of Respect Party candidate GeorgeGalloway.

FEBRUARY 

Coroner Peter Straker is suspended by Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge pending an inquiry into Mr Straker’s behaviour by the Office for Judicial Complaints.

The number of young people on the dole for longer than six months in the Bradford district has increased from 660 in January 2011 to 2,135, the highest rise being in Bradford West, where 12 per cent of the workforce is unemployed.

The department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs removes credit funding for a £300m household waste disposal plant proposed by Bradford Council and Calderdale Council.

Bradford City lose the Capital One Cup final at Wembley 5-0 to Swansea.

MARCH 

Council Tax in Bradford is to go up by nearly two per cent.

Bradford Council provisionally agrees to buy the Odeon and Tyrls police station buildings for £2 if the Home and Communities Agency agrees to pay £4.1m for their repair and maintenance.

‘Bradford Batman’ Stan Worby, a 39-year-old takeaway delivery driver, appears in Trafalgar Street police HQ and hands over 27-year-old Daniel Frayne, wanted for questioning, and vanishes into the night.

Bradford Council announces the revival of the Bradford Festival after a gap of seven years.

Visiting businesses in Keighley, the Prime Minister David Cameron welcomes the creation of 1,000 jobs including 400 apprenticeships by BT, 50 of them in Bradford.

Police arrest 54 men suspected of sexual grooming across the district.

Bradford’s King’s Science Academy free school at Lidget Green is told by Ofsted to improve its performance all round.

Freezing weather followed by a blizzard closes more than 170 schools and results in the cancellation of the charity 10k run.

The discovery of asbestos in Bradford Central Library is to delay the re-opening of the building, closed last year for £900,000-worth of repairs.

APRIL 

More than 27,000 people in Bradford in future will have to contribute at least 25 per cent towards their council tax, following a cut in the amount of money for council tax benefit.

Bradford Council planners controversially vote 4-3 in favour of 310 new houses on land off Bingley Road and at Derry Hill, Menston, in spite of vigorous protests by campaigners.

Auroras Encore, trained by Sue and Harvey Smith at High Eldwick, wins the Grand National, a 66-1 outsider ridden by Ryan Mania.

The Department of Communities and Local Government revises its estimate of Bradford’s housing need, saying there will be 13,000 fewer households in the district by 2021.

In the 19th Bradford International Film Festival, actor Sir Tom Courtenay receives a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Homes and Communities Agency offers Bradford Council £3.5m to help make the Odeon and the police station site suitable for development.

Bradford Council leader David Green says Bradford Council is keeping more than £129m in reserve against the prospect of future Government spending cuts.

Bradford Council sacks the governing body of Bradford Moor Community Primary school after a critical report by inspectors.

MAY 

T&A launches the £1m Crocus Cancer Appeal, along with Sovereign Health Care, Yorkshire Cancer Research and Bradford University, to buy a hi-tech mass spectrometer to speed up research.

Bradford City beat Burton Albion 5-4 over two matches in the Division two play-offs to reach Wembley for the second time this season. In the final they crush Northampton Town 3-0 to gain promotion to League One.

Bradford Council agrees to buy the Odeon for £1 from the Homes and Communities Agency.

Airedale Hospital is to get a new £6m A&E unit to replace the existing one.

Bradford Royal Infirmary becomes the first hospital in the world to acquire a low-radiation, £600,000 body and head scanner than can perform 50 scans a day.

Councillor Khadim Hussain is installed as the new Lord Mayor. His charity is Bradford Disability Sport and Leisure.

The T&A reveals the Council’s £9m plan to move the Central Library into the Gallery 1 building in City Park and move the Gallery to Cartwright Hall.

The Jacob’s Well pub, closed for more than a year, re-opens as a specialist real-ale free house under the ownership of William Wagstaff, owner of the New Beehive Inn.

Consternation as Bradford-based Yorkshire Building Society announces £6m expansion plans – in Leeds. Offices in Filey Street and New Augustus Street, Bradford, to close.

JUNE 

Bingley Harrier Jonny Brownlee wins the International Triathlon Union World Series in Madrid for the second consecutive year.

The T&A launches a campaign to save the National Media Museum from the threat of closure after Ian Blatchford, director of its parent Science Museum in London, warns that the NMM has lost its way.

The Council announces the total cost of City Park – £24,569,664, not the £30m that was rumoured.

The BBC films a live Bollywood version of Bizet’s opera Carmen in City Park for screening on BBC3.

Following a damning report to MPs about the extent of Asian male grooming, Keighley and Ilkley MP Kris Hopkins calls for the Crime and Policing Bill to be amended to prosecute the owners of small hotels and bed and breakfast establishments complicit in grooming.

Culture Minister Ed Vaizey meets Bradford MPs and gives them reason to hope the National Media Museum will not be closed, though the Science Museum Group makes no comment.

JULY

Science Museum director Ian Blatchford confirms that the National Media Museum will not be closed. Uncertainty about the Science Museum’s borrowing and capital spending had been resolved, securing the NMM’s future, he said.

The BBC announce that Look North presenter Christa Ackroyd no longer works for the corporation, after more than 12 years on the payroll.

The Born In Bradford study of babies born at BRI between 2007 and 2011 reveals that parents who are blood relatives and older mothers are two main causes of birth defects. The rate in Bradford, three per cent, is nearly double the national average.

A Church of England General Synod meeting at York approves the plan to scrap Bradford, Ripon, Leeds and Wakefield Diocese to create a new diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales.

Bradford Council’s Labour members vote in favour of joining a West Yorkshire County Council-style Combined Authority. But Conservatives abstain and Liberal-Democrats oppose.

With July turning out to be the hottest for 200 years, the Pakeezah store in Ingleby Road is destroyed in a fire fought by 70 firemen with 11 fire engines.

St Bede’s Catholic Boys’ School in Heaton and St Joseph’s Catholic Girls’ School in Manningham given the go-ahead to merge.

Bradford Royal Infirmary takes just 22 minutes to save 70-year-old Keith Robertshaw from a stroke that could have killed him, less than half the national average of treatment for strokes.

Digitised speed cameras are installed in Bradford by the West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, reportedly to replace existing ones.

AUGUST

Bradford Council admits to planning to make a profit of £2.2m next year from car parking charges and fines.

Yorkshire Water, part of the Kelda Holdings Group, paid no Corporation Tax last year on profits of £186m due to tax credits of more than £46m., it is revealed.

Bradford City dispense with the services of City Gent mascot Lenny Berry after 19 years.

The Department of Transport agrees to a £29m cycle route of 23km between Bradford and Leeds.

All five Bradford Council Respect councillors stand down after Mohammed Shabbir and Ishtiaq Ahmed are suspended following Twitter remarks about George Galloway publicly stating that he was considering contesting the position of Mayor of London in 2016.

Former pupils claiming to have been subjected to physical and sexual abuse in the 1960s and 1970s at William Henry Smith School, a private residential special school in Brighouse, receive out-of-court compensation which could run into six figures.

A Little Horton teenage boy is savaged by a a bulldog. Police later shoot the dog dead.

A new inhaler treatment is developed by Bradford Teaching Hospitals for patients with breathing disorder chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

70 Bradford Hackey Carriage drivers start wearing matching shirts and ties to give the city a more professional image.

SEPTEMBER 

Welcome To Yorkshire wins the World Travel Awards in Turkey – the only time in 17 years that a region rather than a city or country has won.

Two men and a young woman are killed after their car crashes into a hair salon on Thornton Road.

Shipley-based Bradford Disability Sport and Leisure is awarded more than £151,000 of National Lottery money to provide sporting opportunities for young disabled people.

For the second time in two years the body of a dead baby is found in rubbish at Associated Waste Management in Valley Road.

Bradford’s primary schools register the third worst test results in the UK for ten and 11-year-olds. Results for spelling, punctuation, grammar, reading, maths and science are well below the national average.

Omar Khan and MP Gerry Sutcliffe relinquish their co-chairmanship of Bradford Bulls. Online bed businessman Mark Moore and the club’s general manager Ryan Whitcut take over ownership.

M62 traffic improvement works finish ahead of schedule and £17m under budget.

OCTOBER 

Bradford mother-of-eight Amanda Hutton is found guilty at Bradford Crown Court of killing her four-year-old son Hamzah by starving him to death. The 43-year-old is given a 15-year jail sentence.

The English Defence League returns to Bradford, more than three years after its last demonstration in the city. Policing the demonstration is estimated to cost £1.5m.

In the book Crap Towns Returns, Bradford is ranked the second worst place to live in the country behind London by Bradford people themselves.

Keighley and Ilkley MP Kris Hopkins is promoted in a Cabinet reshuffle to junior minister in the Department of Communities and Local Government.

Councillor Ralph Berry, in charge of children and young people’s services on Bradford Council, attempts to become Labour’s candidate to fight Kris Hopkins’s Keighley seat in the 2015 General Election.

For the third consecutive year Bradford wins the Curry Capital of Britain title, beating Glasgow and Wolverhampton.

Bradford Council announces a 15-point plan to improve education delivery and performance in schools, including getting rid of poor teachers, cracking down on absences in term time and sub-standard English.

Bradford University researchers are given £2.4m to conduct a four-year study of how dementia care can be improved.

Bradford Council’s five Respect Party members resign en masse to become Independents, leaving George Galloway MP the sole Respect politician in the district.

Fifty-five out of 180 Bradford hackney carriages and private hire vehicles fail random safety tests, some of minor points.

Department of Education auditors challenge the financial management and running of the Kings Science Academy free school in Lidget Green.

A draft Bradford Council budget for 2014-16 forecasts spending cuts of £89m and job cuts of 700 jobs.

NOVEMBER

Bradford Council’s executive committee accepts proposals to cut spending by a further £89m over the next two years in spite of public protests.

The Bite The Mango film festival is revived after three years as Beyond The Mango.

Sainsbury’s pulls out of plan to convert the former Bradford and Bingley building society HQ in Bingley into a supermarket. Instead they intend to demolish the building.

Bradford Council is to revise its housing strategy for green field sites following criticism from campaigners. It’s new target is 42,100 homes – 2,200 a year – with more being built on brown field sites.

Administrators are called in to Barratts Shoes at Apperley Bridge after a £5m financing deal falls through.

Former Bradford councillor, Methodist minister and Co-Op Bank chairman the Rev Paul Flowers is arrested and questioned by police following newspaper revelations about the purchase of illegal drugs.

DECEMBER 

Three Bradford postcodes – BD9, BD3 and BD8 – are among the top nine ‘crash for cash’ car insurance claim fraud areas in the country.

First Bus is to cut fares on some bus routes following a big increase in passenger journeys – up to 100,000 extra a week, the company says.

In spite of budget cuts, Bradford Council forecasts an underspend of £2.7m to the end of March 2014.

Bradford Council admits that the real reason for Paul Flowers’ resignation in 2011 – pornography on his council computer – was not disclosed to save the former executive committee member from embarrassment.

Bradford magician Dynamo – Steven Frayne – given an honorary degree by Bradford University.

Bradford Bulls are in financial trouble again. The directors say budget cuts of at least £400,000 must be made to keep the club going.

A sample survey of people aged 16 to 64 by the National Office for Statistics finds that one-in-five people in Bradford have no work and don’t want it. Some 32,000 people have never been in work.

Over the past year more Bradford Council employees have signed off on long-term sick leave, adding nearly £500,000 to the year’s sick leave bill of £6.5m.

Bradford’s new City Library near City Park opens.

Professor David Sharpe, who pioneered the Bradford Burns Research Unit after the 1985 Bradford City fire, retires.

Westfield signs legal documents committing it to building the Broadway shopping mall. Work is to start on January 6.

Bradford councillors back a Morrisons planning application for a supermarket, houses, petrol station and business units in Shipley.