Business bosses want to see the public sector working faster to keep pace with the millions of pounds being pumped into regenerating the Aire Valley.

During the last year about £800 million has been invested in the area, it was revealed at the year-on celebrations of the Aire Valley Masterplan.

The document spells out how Keighley, Bingley and Shipley should develop over the next 15 years.

But improvements to the infrastructure of the area was lagging behind the redevelopment, it was claimed.

Andrew Mason, managing director of Newmason Properties, which is spending £80 million rejuvenating Victoria Mills in Shipley, challenged his colleagues to personally lobby politicians at Westminster to provide more funding.

He was one of about 50 businessmen who attended the Airedale Masterplan One Year On celebrations at Dalton Mills in Keighley, yesterday.

He said: "The Masterplan is working. Bradford planners are doing there best but improvements to the infrastructure are vital and the Masterplan can't do it on its own.

"We should act as a collective voice and go down on mass to Westminster and tell them how much is going on up here and how they need to follow-up what is being done in the private sector," he said.

He said money needed to be pumped into the Shipley eastern relief road, into improving Keighley and Shipley stations, into improving the canal links and green corridors.

Ian Hayfield, director of Hayfield Robinson property consultants, said a major stumbling block was the six weeks it took planners to process applications.

It was too long and needed speeding up, he said. Mike Milner, of the Airedale Partnership board, which commissioned the Masterplan, said planners were aware of the needs of developers and were listening. Business people were given a run-down on how the project had developed over the last 12 months by Andy Taylor, the Airedale Partnership regeneration manager and Mike Osborne of Arup, the consultancy which is helping spearhead the initiative.

Mr Osborne said that £500 million had been invested between last year and this year in residential development in the Airedale corridor. About £300 million had been spent in the public sector in schemes linked to schools, hospitals and public transport.

A Transport Vision for West Yorkshire had been set up in March, which was looking at the state of public transport - including the Leeds-Bradford airport - between the five local authorities in West Yorkshire.

  • To access details of the Masterplan log onto www.airedalepartnership.org
e-mail: clive.white@bradford.newsquest.co.uk
MASTERPLAN PROJECTS UNDER WAY
  • The Advanced Digital Institute in Shipley, aims at helping establish new hi-tech businesses and strengthening existing companies.
  • The Keighley College North Street site has been purchased with cash from Yorkshire Forward and a feasibility study into the potential of developing a hotel and retail and residential facility will get underway next year. The aim is to have the project started by 2009.
  • Plans prepared to develop Bingley Technology Park on land opposite Bingley Grammar School and a 40-acre site at Castlefields Industrial Estate.
  • Funding to refurbish Keighley Railway Station - the busiest on the Airedale line - has been secured which will forge closer link with the Keighley & Worth valley Railway.
  • Road options and designs for Shipley Eastern Link Road are considered in conjunction with improvements to Canal Road. It is being coupled with the reopening of Bradford Canal and regeneration of Shipley station.