Women in Shipley are failing to keep up appointments to have life-saving breast screening.

Only 77 per cent of women aged between 50 and 70 are turning up at the Pennine Breast Screening mobile unit.

Janette Griggs, of the screening service, said although the screening saved around 1,250 lives every year in the UK too many women were missing their appointments.

The regional scheme covers Airedale and Bradford as well as Calderdale, Dewsbury and Huddersfield.

Mrs Griggs said: "Our target is 80 per cent, the national take-up figure of routine screening is 70 per cent so we're not doing too bad but we want to do better.

"One in nine women will develop breast cancer at sometime in their life so that's good enough reason as any to come and get checked out."

The 33 foot mobile unit visits different districts every three years and because it's usual base - Shipley Health Centre in Alexander Road -is being redeveloped, it had to find a new home.

It is now outside Filtronic PLC on the Waterfront in Saltaire.

By the time it leaves the Shipley area at the end of February next year it should have screened 7,000 women.

Women, aged 50 to 70, get their invitations through the post via their GP surgeries nearer to their appointment dates, but Mrs Griggs is worried numbers have fallen even more since they moved to the new site in Salts Mill Road.

She said: "We're finding our numbers have fallen more than usual. Women have all sorts of reasons for not showing up but we're worried people aren't reading their invites properly and don't realise we have moved. We need to get the message out where we are."

Leaflets and fliers are being printed to put around the town.

She added: "We had lots of people from the area, including the local MP Philip Davies and the interim town centre manager Yvonne Crossley, to find this site. If we hadn't found anywhere women would have had to travel to St Luke's in Bradford to be screened and we didn't want that."