CALLS for community groups to get more time and financial support to help save under-threat public halls were rejected during a heated debate in City Hall on Tuesday.

The authority’s opposition leader, Councillor Simon Cooke, said in all his years on the council nothing had made him angrier than the way the authority was handling the process.

Halls in Menston and Burley-in-Wharfedale, as well as Silsden, Denholme, Harden, Oakworth and Baildon, are being threatened with closure unless community groups take them over from April next year.

But a meeting of the full council heard that some groups were facing problems meeting that deadline or were being faced with large maintenance backlogs on the buildings.

Cllr Cooke urged council chiefs to “take your hands off the windpipe of local communities” and help them to do what it was asking them to do, that is, take on the buildings so they stayed open.

He put forward a motion calling on the authority to scrap plans for one of two new swimming pools planned for the city, and instead use the cash to fund work on these community buildings, as well as the existing Bingley and Queensbury pools, which will be handed over to community groups or closed under current plans.

But Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Labour’s executive member for regeneration, accused the Tories of “putting forward a divisive motion”, by suggesting the inner city was being favoured for investment over the wider district.

He said it was wrong to suggest the Labour administration was supporting one part of the district and not another.

Councillor Adrian Naylor (Ind, Craven) said until recently the council had only had one member of staff working on so-called ‘asset transfers’ of its buildings to community groups.

He said this staff member had been “working heroically” on the task and only recently had additional staff been brought in to help.

He raised issues with the transfer of Silsden Town Hall and highlighted the need for transitional arrangements to help “give these community groups time” to take these buildings on.

But the Conservatives’ motion was defeated at the vote and a Labour motion, highlighting “millions of pounds” of investment in buildings like Shipley and Keighley libraries, Shipley Pool, Cliffe Castle and Keighley Market, was passed instead.

The halls which the council will no longer support from April are Burley Queens Hall, Harden Memorial Hall, Baildon’s Ian Clough Hall, Denholme Mechanics’ Institute, Holden Hall in Oakworth, Kirklands Community Centre in Menston and Silsden Town Hall.