Despite a pledge of a funding package for roads, Calderdale Conservatives believe that in terms of repairs parts of Brighouse and Rastrick are rapidly becoming lost highways.

They argue that if approved new funding announced recently will be capital spending for new infrastructure and only one road in Brighouse and Rastrick is scheduled for resurfacing in schemes outlined in Calderdale Council’s Highways Capital and Revenue Programmes for 2018-19 and Strategic Infrastructure Delivery Plan.

Conservative group leader on the council and Brighouse councillor Scott Benton said the wards were becoming forgotten areas where highway repairs were concerned despite some roads being in very poor condition. Rastrick ward councillor Sophie Whittaker (Con), who raised the issue of the state of the area’s roads at July’s full council meeting, said recent comments made by the ruling Labour group’s Cabinet member for Regeneration and Economic Strategy, Coun Barry Collins, did not answer her question.

Coun Collins (Illingworth and Mixenden) referenced her question at Cabinet and said schemes announced among a highways package worth half a billion pounds included a range of measures for Rastrick’s roads and there was even the possibility of a new motorway junction there. But Coun Whittaker said: “I wasn’t asking about capital spending for new highways projects in Rastrick and, or the rest of the borough, as Coun Collins alludes to. Nor did I ask about additional roads, motorway slip road plans, or roads in Ryburn or Pecket Well. “What I did ask, very specifically, was why roads in Rastrick, particularly Bridge End, Gooder Lane and Birds Royd Lane, remain in serious disrepair?

A simple question asked repeatedly by residents that simply deserves an answer.”

Coun Benton said that, according to the programmes, in Brighouse and Rastrick wards only Armytage Road was set to benefit from any planned resurfacing work in the next year.

“The condition of many of our roads across Brighouse and Rastrick is very poor and has gradually deteriorated over the last few year. Brighouse and Rastrick has some of Calderdale’s worst roads and we are extremely disappointed to see that only one road across our whole area is due to receive any investment in the next year.

“Brighouse repeatedly gets passed over for investment by this Labour-run council and yet again we are missing out. We are the second largest town in the borough and residents will rightly feel let down by the lack of investment in the roads in our area,” he said.

Coun Whittaker said residents were evading roads like Bridge End to avoid risk of vehicle damage and were asking why they were paying increasing amounts of Council Tax if routes were not being maintained to a standard of being able to be driven on.

She said residents were feeling overlooked in favour of other areas. Coun Benton said the vast majority of half a billion pounds of investment in highways announced by Cabinet was being provided by central government through the West Yorkshire Comibined Authority and had yet to be confirmed. If received it would be for new infrastructure not repairing existing roads in poor conditon, he said.

Caption guidance – pics cleared for use by media partners: Brighouse ward councillors Scott Benton and Howard Blagbrough at a potholed Birds Royd Lane, Brighouse Pot holes on Bridge End