logo
Bradford Council wants to continue clampdown on bad driving

Bradford Council wants to continue clampdown on bad driving

BBC News28-04-2025
A West Yorkshire council wants to extend a legal order prohibiting anti-social behaviour and dangerous driving for another three years.Bradford Council introduced the Public Space Protection Order in 2019 to clamp down on driver behaviour that causes a nuisance, but is not necessarily illegal.With the current order expiring this summer, the local authority has started a public consultation with a view to extending it until 2028.Councillor Kamran Hussain said the order was "vital".
The order prohibits acts such as loudly revving an engine, causing danger to other road users and pedestrians, and shouting abuse from a car.Anyone failing to comply with the order could face a Fixed Penalty Notice or fine of £1,000.According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, hundreds of fines have been issued since the order was introduced.The consultation will ask members of the public which acts should be included in the updated order, which areas of Bradford they feel are worst for anti-social driving and what time of day they feel bad driving is worst.
'Not enough enforcement'
Figures from West Yorkshire Police show 123 fines were handed out at two car meets on the Euroway Trading Estate in 2023.In May last year two men were each fined £1,000 by Bradford and Keighley Magistrates' Court after being caught on CCTV taking part in a car meet on roads at Euroway.The men, one from Pudsey and another from Ackworth, did not pay the fines handed to them, and so were handed the hefty fines by the court.Opposition councillor Matt Edwards, who leads the Greens in Bradford, said the order must be better enforced in future."Bradford Council have had this PSPO for anti-social use of vehicles for many years and yet I'm not sure many residents will say the situation with dangerous driving has gotten any better in our district."In fact in some places it's worse. There is just not enough enforcement."
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Sheffield Council announces six-month recruitment freeze
Sheffield Council announces six-month recruitment freeze

BBC News

timean hour ago

  • BBC News

Sheffield Council announces six-month recruitment freeze

Sheffield Council is to freeze recruitment for six months as it grapples with a budget gap of more than £ authority said it would stop external and non-essential internal recruitment from 1 September to save £ non-essential spending - including travel, training and projects - would be tightly restricted and there would be a "prudent review" of reserves. Funding already earmarked could potentially be re-allocated, it Zahira Naz, chairman of the finance committee, said: "We are facing the same tough choices as councils across the country, but we are taking clear, co-ordinated action now to tackle these challenges." A council report said there had been "a persistent budget overspend that we need to tackle".Officers are aware that the findings from an equal pay review looking at 2,000 different job roles will be published next council has previously said it was confident any equal pay claims would not be on a scale serious enough to bankrupt the council, but similar pay reviews at other councils nationwide have led to multimillion-pound backdated pay-outs. 'Rigorous review' The recruitment freeze would contain immediate staffing costs and give the council time to reassess its workforce in the longer term, the budget report would need to deliver services with a lower budget "encouraging creative solutions and potential realignment of roles where appropriate".The council said its budget had been reduced over a number of years with continued pressures in adult social care, children's services and homelessness, driven by rising demand and ongoing cost adult social care, there would be a "radical review" of non-essential and discretionary spending to reduce special educational needs and disabilities, senior managers were having daily meetings "to drive down" the number of students transported by taxis from home to school, which currently stands at more than 1, would be a "rigorous review" of who is eligible for transport, routes and post-16 travel policy, the authority of disabled children can get direct payments so they have more control and flexibility over services, but there would be "detailed analysis to identify cost-saving opportunities".The report said: "Measures include scrutinising high-cost care packages and assessing the feasibility of in-house residential facilities to ensure value for money." Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North

The kidnapping of Shannon Matthews: ‘I believed her mother – then helped arrest her'
The kidnapping of Shannon Matthews: ‘I believed her mother – then helped arrest her'

Telegraph

timean hour ago

  • Telegraph

The kidnapping of Shannon Matthews: ‘I believed her mother – then helped arrest her'

Julie Bushby was at home doing the ironing when she heard the news that would forever cast a shadow over her community. 'One of the neighbours was outside, looking down towards Karen's house and she told me that Shannon had gone missing.' Karen Matthews, 32, phoned the police to say that her nine-year-old 'beautiful princess daughter' had failed to return home from school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, on Feb 19 2008. It was the start of what would become West Yorkshire Police's largest operation since the Yorkshire Ripper: a 24-day, £3.2m search that gripped the nation, before sparking a debate on class, welfare and 'broken Britain'. Bushby is among friends, journalists and detectives who recall the fraught chapter in a new two-part Prime Video documentary, The Hunt for Shannon Matthews. Then chairman of the Moorside tenants and residents association, she opened up the Community House, turning all the lights on in the hope it would act as a kind of beacon should Shannon see it. It also became the hub of the round-the-clock campaign to search for the schoolgirl. Leaflets and T-shirts – 'Have you seen SHANNON MATTHEWS?' – were printed and vigils arranged. Within 48 hours, 200 volunteers had joined the hunt in freezing temperatures. Soon, there were so many, police had to ask them to step back for fear they would disturb evidence. Bushby, now 55 and a grandmother of 10, was only a passing acquaintance with Matthews until they befriended each other on a parenting course, run by a local Youth Inclusion Programme. 'I had problems with one of my kids and she had problems with one of hers,' she says in the documentary, but won't be drawn on further details today. Initially, Bushby had 'no thoughts at all' about the disappearance. 'Shannon could have just gone down to her mates or anything,' she tells The Telegraph. But slowly it dawned on her how grave the situation was. Especially when she opened her curtains to see the street 'just full of TV wagons'. Fellow neighbour Petra Jamieson says it 'looked like the circus had come to town'. Some of the attention was welcome; many across Britain had been wondering why the missing working-class girl from Dewsbury had been getting so much less publicity than when the daughter of doctors – Madeleine McCann – had vanished nine months earlier. But the media glare soon soured. Radio commentators wondered, was it relevant that Matthews had seven children by five different fathers in nine years? What about the fact Matthews was photographed carrying in a case of lager? 'Very deprived area, Dewsbury Moor, full of poor families, bad for car crime, lots of single mothers,' intoned one news reporter. 'The local towns, they showed [genuine] interest. The rest of the country, I think, judged us more than anything else,' remembers Bushby, who was played by Sheridan Smith in the starring role of 2017 BBC One series The Moorside. Smith has described Bushby as a friend. Bushby said the drama told the story truthfully, 'and it showed the community spirit, which is what it was about'. But she still has a particular distaste for how The Sun reported the case, describing the estate as 'a real-life version of the smash-hit Channel 4 show Shameless' (an early, abandoned police theory was that a storyline in the Channel 4 show had actually inspired Shannon's kidnapping) and quoting a local road sweeper who quipped: 'It's like Beirut, only worse.' 'I mean, even your paper did a story and didn't judge us,' she tells me. 'And you're a posher paper than the one that did slate us.' She had welcomed the reporter into her home and allowed him to use her loo. Months later, Bushby confronted him, borrowing a copy of The Sun from a man nearby and tapping him on the shoulder with it. 'I said, 'Next time you want to use my toilet, that's your toilet paper.'' On March 14, Bushby received a phone call from a local saying Shannon had been rescued by police. 'I think for all of us, it was a big relief,' she says. So focused had she been on rallying support that she had not allowed herself to spend any time analysing the behaviour of Matthews. However: 'When she was found, that's when the ball game changed.' The community was reeling from the news that the girl had been discovered hidden in the base of a bed at a flat in nearby Batley Carr belonging to Michael Donovan – the uncle of Matthews's partner. Another friend and neighbour, Natalie Wood, became more suspicious of Matthews, more quickly. Three weeks after Shannon's return, Wood and Bushby organised a meeting with her. It took place in the car of Detective Constable Christine Freeman, the family liaison officer, with Matthews in the front seat. But Freeman let the two women, who earned the nickname 'Cagney & Lacey' after the 1980s TV crimebusters, do all the talking. 'Me and Natalie got our heads together,' says Bushby, 'and we played this, if you like, good cop, bad cop in the back of the car. My thoughts were, 'God, I hope it's over today. I hope she comes out with the truth.' We both said she'll deny it all the way through. But we thought it was worth a bash.' Wood put it to Matthews that she had cooked up a plan with Donovan before 'bottling it'. Silence filled the car before Matthews finally said, 'Yes, that's right' and burst into tears. Freeman arrested her on the spot. Matthews still seemed unaware of what lay ahead. 'She did say, 'Can I go home now?', but that's like a child saying: 'I've told [the] truth now, can I go home?' I don't think people realise just how childlike Karen actually was.' The trial of Matthews and Donovan was told that Shannon had been drugged and tethered to a beam in his attic. The pair were found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, and sentenced to eight years in prison, serving four. All of Matthews's children were taken into care and Shannon was given a new identity. Donovan died last year. After the interrogation in the car, Bushby made a promise to Matthews: 'I told her I'd always be her friend.' It was a pledge she kept for the duration of her incarceration, going to see her monthly – the only visitor after 'everybody abandoned her'. I ask how Matthews changed over the four years. 'She didn't,' says Bushby. 'She was just very timid if certain women were in the same room. Whenever I said to her, 'Ooh, that's a nice shiner you've got', she'd tell me that she'd walked into a door. She walked into a fair few doors.' Bushby believes that a version of the story Matthews first told (she later changed it four times) was what actually happened, and it was nothing to do with seeking a cash reward. Rather, she arranged for Donovan to take Shannon while she made plans to leave partner Craig Meehan – who later that year was convicted of possessing indecent images of children – but she felt forced to report her daughter missing as she became trapped in a web of lies. In 2017, Bushby told The Mirror that she thought there were at least three other people – no longer living in the area – involved in the kidnapping. Indeed, in the documentary, she points out, 'even the judge turned round and said, 'There were more people involved in this''. 'Still to this day, I think that,' she says now. Although she has three specific people in mind, she adds, 'I'm not going to name them because I can't afford the lawsuit.' As for why they weren't ever investigated: 'Once Karen cracked, I don't think [the police] were interested any more.' On why 'Britain's most hated mum' would carry the can for others: 'She's told me that she's scared of family.' Will we ever get to the truth, I wonder. 'No,' says Bushby. She hopes Shannon, now 26 and living under an assumed identity, is 'doing well, and she's reaching her dreams'. And that she is able to put this behind her? 'Well, she'll never be able to put it behind her, will she?' Perhaps nor will Dewsbury Moor estate. Seventeen years on, when people hear where Bushby is from, they still ask if that's where 'that kid went missing under t'bed'. But she has never considered moving. Says Bushby: 'Because Moorside's safe. It's my home. It's still a friendly community.' When David Cameron visited to make amends for having damned a locale 'whose pillars are crime, unemployment and addiction', Bushby put him in his place. She told him to deliver his apology from the heart, not a piece of paper, and chided him for turning up sans jacket and tie, unlike his interview with Penny Smith on that morning's GMTV. 'I asked him, if I changed my name to Penny, would he have made an effort?' She only agreed to take part in this new programme to put a serious counterpoint to Shannon Matthews: The Musical, an Edinburgh Fringe 'black comedy' released as a film last year. She has not seen it: 'I'm not going to watch some sort of s---e.' But she fully expects another backlash, this time on social media, once the documentary airs. 'If people didn't have their opinion, it wouldn't be England, would it?'

Man in his 80s critical after being hit by car in Wilsden
Man in his 80s critical after being hit by car in Wilsden

BBC News

time2 hours ago

  • BBC News

Man in his 80s critical after being hit by car in Wilsden

A man in his 80s suffered life-threatening injuries when he was hit by a car near Bradford, police crash happened in Wilsden just before midday on Saturday when a Peugeot 208 struck the pedestrian on Shay Lane close to the junction with Crack man was taken to hospital where he remains in a critical condition, West Yorkshire Police driver of the Peugeot remained at the scene, and the force appealed for witnesses or anyone with footage to come forward. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store