A former Lord Mayor of Bradford has spoken of his sadness at the closure of a charity which helped save the lives of premature babies in the district.

Councillor Tony Miller and his wife Elsie chose to support the Baby Unit Regional Parents Society (Burps) as part of his Lord Mayor's Appeal in 1998/99.

The charity, which supported neo-natal care at Bradford Royal Infirmary, benefited by £145,000, which paid for a state-of-the-art ultrasound baby scanner and the refurbishment of the special care baby unit.

It meant that premature babies born in Bradford no longer had to travel to Leeds for life-saving investigations.

The money also funded improvements for premature babies at Airedale General Hospital near Steeton.

However, just a few years later the charity has been wound up due to a lack of volunteers.

Coun Miller (Lab, Windhill and Wrose), chose the special care baby units as the target for his appeal because of the death of his own twins more than 40 years ago.

Today he said he hoped the people of Bradford would continue to support the life-saving work of the unit.

"It still needs money even though there is no longer an official charity," he said.

"I chose to support the charity because it was something I had directly suffered from. We provided scanners and life support machines.

"At that time premature babies had to travel to Leeds for treatment and because they were so young, so poorly and so vulnerable a lot of them didn't make it.

"The new equipment meant many didn't have to make that journey and we hope we saved a lot of babies' lives."

The charity was set up 15 years ago by parents and staff on the unit who wanted to help local families with premature babies.

But as the children of those parents have grown up, the charity has failed to attract more volunteers and it was left to a hard core of people.

Coun Miller said: "It is sad but I am sure the donations will continue to come through. The people of Bradford are very generous and will continue to give."

He added: "We need to thank those people who worked so hard over the years."