Bradford Council’s Conservative group will not attempt to form a coalition to contest Labour’s leadership of the local authority.

Tory leader and Worth Valley Councillor Glen Miller said the group will not put forward a candidate to stand against Councillor Ian Greenwood, the leader of the Labour group and current leader of the Council.

Coun Miller promised to hold the Labour-led Council to account “for every poor decision that they make within the next 12 months” and said: “We recognise that to take control of the Council, we would have to head up a coalition which included every single non-Labour councillor and which would have a majority of one.

“We would thus be in partnership with the British National Party and we feel that it would be wholly inappropriate for us to enter into a coalition with that party.

“Having considered all of the options, we have thus decided that at this moment in time, it is in the best interests of Bradford district, that the Conservative group does not contest Coun Greenwood’s bid to remain leader of the Council for the coming year.”

Constitutionally, the leader does not have to put himself up for re-election at the Council’s AGM on Tuesday, May 24, but the Liberal Democrat group leader Coun Jeanette Sunderland said Coun Greenwood’s decision not to had a “whiff of arrogance”.

She said: “He should at least seek a confirmatory vote to publicly show that he has enough support to pass policy and a budget through the Council.”

Coun Greenwood dismissed the Lib Dem stance for lacking sense and said Coun Miller had made a “fair” decision by stating his group had no intention of contesting his position.

  • Read the full story in Tuesday's T&A