AN Otley trader this week hit out at town leaders for failing to exploit the area's many television and historical connections.

Maggie Cahill, owner of the Gourmet Sandwich Emporium in Newmarket, claims the town is losing out on its tourism potential by failing to promote its links with Emmerdale, Heartbeat and A Touch of Frost.

And she wants to see coach parties, themed walks and special booklets organised in a bid to encourage more money spending tourists and other visitors into the struggling town.

But the town partnership's tourism leader Ruth Blackwell has warned against turning Otley into a plastic television town.

She said: "One of our concerns is that any development of tourism should also work for the benefit of the residents. We are very aware of the dangers of television connections, which is not to say that it should not be part of the selling of Otley."

But Mrs Cahill said: "We are missing out on a golden opportunity to promote the town. Otley is an interesting place and we need to encourage more people to come here.

"All the traders are saying how there are not as many people as there used to be. You go shopping on a Saturday and there are no young people because there are no shops for them - all we have is charity shops," she said.

A large part of Otley Town Partnership's A Strategy for Success document is the development of the town's tourism potential.

Partnership members are working towards developing a strategy with Leeds City Council, making better use of the market and promoting the town more widely, including the production of a guide to Otley's attractions and getting it on the computer Internet.

Mrs Blackwell said the partnership was keen to strike the right balance between promoting Otley and encouraging hordes of tourists into the town.

She added coach firms did know about Otley but there was a problem getting tourists to come to the town which was now being addressed by the partnership group.

Emmerdale is largely filmed on private property on a specially built set at Harewood House but some filming still takes place in Otley.

The hugely popular Heartbeat is also filmed from time to time in Otley - often in Newmarket, in Cattlemarket Street and in the nearby village of Askwith.

A spokesman for Yorkshire Television, which films Emmerdale and Heartbeat, said the television company would not and could not prevent towns from promoting itself as a place where filming took place.

He said: "Certainly a place like Goathland gets quite a lot of tourists on the back of Heartbeat and I imagine it's the village which organises it."

He added that although filming on private property would not be open to the public, there was nothing YTV could do to stop people from watching filming taking place in public places.

And he added: "Everybody lays claims to places like Bronte Country, it is very much down to the town."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.