A Guiseley architect is demanding to know why no action has been taken to stop the illegal filling of Tran Mire Beck.

Colin Lancaster, of Bradford Road, at Tranmere Park claims he has watched the watercourse be "systematically" filled in over the last decade, while Leeds City Council has done nothing to stop it.

Mr Lancaster, 61, says the problem has been caused by everything from housing developments to individuals illegally dumping rubbish.

But he was spurred to renew his efforts to get an answer from the local authority after watching one of the few remaining stretches of the channel being covered over to provide car parking spaces for a new office development.

He said: "This happened over the Easter break on a piece of the beck that was a six or seven foot deep channel, although it rarely filled to that depth with water.

"So the whole thing's gone now, from Thorpe Lane to Bradford Road, it just doesn't exist.

"It has all been filled in with one thing or another and the council has been aware of what's been going on, but they don't want to know.

"I've been told on several occasions that they don't have the money to reinstate it, but the council has money there somewhere in its budget. They should have been much tougher on those doing this and stopped them filling the beck.

"We are talking about something that has been there hundreds, if not thousands of years and as well as providing drainage it was a place for wildlife. We used to take the kids frogging down there and you could watch the tadpoles and other creatures."

Mr Lancaster is now hoping other environmental groups will get in touch to support his calls to have the beck reinstated.

He has already received a reply from the council saying it has contacted the owners of the most recently filled section to tell them they were contravening the Public Health Act 1936, the Land Drainage Act 1991 and the Land Drainage Byelaws.

The authority's Land Drainage department says its surveyors have visited the site, taken photographs of the unapproved work and asked the owners to undo it.

A spokesman said: "We are aware of concerns. The recent covering of a section of the beck with tarmac should not have happened without council permission. We have asked the proprietors to remove it and have told them to submit a formal proposal."

Meanwhile Graham Latty, one of the candidates for the Guiseley and Rawdon ward in next month's local elections, says he will be backing Mr Lancaster's demand for the council to do more.

He said: "The council's Land Drainage department says nobody ever gave permission for the beck to be bunged up and that they are looking into it.

"It seems to have been filled over the years by developers and individuals just throwing things into it and covering it over. In the 'public' parts of the beck everything from household rubbish to old refrigerators has been thrown into it.

"There is a huge stretch of it which doesn't drain at all now. I have been following Mr Lancaster's lead by asking the council to find out who they can go to and say 'go and dig it out again'.

"What I shall be asking for, if nothing happens quite soon, is that the council itself gets it dug out so the beck can start to function again."