Autumn is a wonderful time to explore the charming spots just a short trip from Leeds.

While the weather can be unpredictable, West Yorkshire often enjoys several sunny days before Christmas.

Why not take advantage of these moments to escape the city for a day and discover West Yorkshire’s beautiful countryside, rich history, and cultural heritage?

Here are 9 picturesque villages and towns in West Yorkshire perfect for an autumn day trip:

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1. Haworth

This quant village is full of shops, cafes and pubs along cobbled streets. It is also the home on the Bronte Parsonage, where visitors can dive deep into the life of the literary sisters. | Yorkshire Post

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2. Saltaire

This UNESCO World Heritage model village near Bradford is known for its well-preserved Victorian textile mill. Today, it is the home of a range of independent pubs and cafes. It is also a great spot for an autumn walk. | Archive

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3. Aberford

This small village situated approximately halfway between Leeds and Selby is known for its archaic and picturesque buildings, including the historic Aberford Almshouses built in 1844. Grab a bite to eat at the Arabian Horse on a crisp autumn day. | James Hardisty

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4. Bardsey

Bardsey is an ideal autumn destination for history buffs and nature lovers alike with one of the oldest churches in England, the All Hallows Church, and surrounding scenic beauty. | James Hardisty

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5. Hebden Bridge

The Bohemian hotspot that is Hebden Bridge is a must-visit this autumn. The town was a cultural epicentre in the 70s and 80s, and today, you will find artisan shops, galleries and cafes along with beautiful houses and great places to eat. | Jim Fitton

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6. Holmfirth

The town that inspired Last of the Summer Wine is a popular destination with visitors. The archetypal Yorkshire town is full of charm and perfect for an autumn stroll. | MarkLG1973 - stock.adobe.com

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While the weather can be unpredictable, West Yorkshire often enjoys several sunny days before Christmas.

Why not take advantage of these moments to escape the city for a day and discover West Yorkshire’s beautiful countryside, rich history, and cultural heritage?

Here are 9 picturesque villages and towns in West Yorkshire perfect for an autumn day trip:

7. Keighley

This pretty industrial town in the Bronte country is home to one of England's favourite heritage steam line, well known from the film The Railway Children. Combine your trip with a visit to the nearby Haworth for the ultimate Bronte experience. | Keighley and Worth Valley Railway

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8. Boston Spa

Boston Spa was recently named one of the best places to live in the UK by the Sunday Times. The pretty market town features excellent brunch and lunch spots, parks and pubs to enjoy. | James Hardisty

9. Marsden

This village near Huddersfield combines beautiful natural landscaped and rich cultural history, offering a range of heritage and outdoor activities perfect for an autumn day. Here you can find award-winning eateries, walking trails and canal boats once used to transport coal which takes you through one of the longest highest and deepest tunnel in the UK. | OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images

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A £10m grant to help transform a former West Yorkshire mill into a British Library outpost could be withdrawn, the government has confirmed.

It had been proposed that the former Temple Works site in Leeds would become a new public space for the library, but after the Budget on Wednesday, the Treasury said it was "minded to withdraw funding" in a bid to make savings.

The Grade I-listed Egyptian-style former flax-spinning mill needs extensive structural work and is part of a major regeneration project on the edge of the city centre.

A British Library spokesperson said: "We are exploring a range of options to advance the British Library North project."

The £10m grant for the Temple Works project had been earmarked from the Department of Levelling Up's £100m culture regeneration budget, with British Library North one of 16 selected projects.

The government said it would consult over each site before making a final decision over future funding.

West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin told the BBC that doubt over the future of the £10m grant was disappointing, but she did not think the project was "dead in the water".

Ms Brabin said she would do "everything in my power" to deliver it.

She added that other funding options could emerge from partnerships, Leeds City Council and her office, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA).

"We still have devolved funding committed to British Library North and I will continue to update as we find alternative solutions to bringing the project forward," she said.

The conversion of Temple Works has been estimated to cost £70m in total, with WYCA giving it a £5m boost in 2021.

'Exploring options'

The British Library said it remained as "committed as ever" to working closely with communities in Leeds and West Yorkshire from its existing base in Boston Spa.

A spokesperson said: "Following yesterday’s Budget announcement, we are consulting with DCMS, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and regional partners to navigate the next steps.

"We are exploring a range of options to advance the British Library North project."

Leeds City Council said it also remained committed to "unlocking the huge potential" of Temple Works and the plans for a new British Library North.

Council leader James Lewis said: "We are currently working through the fine detail of yesterday’s Budget announcement and assessing how it might affect the make-up of the funding package for the scheme.”

Temple Works is known for its Egyptian-style architecture and stories of sheep grazing on the roof when it was a mill in the 19th Century.

According to Historic England, the mill's owners were said to have hoisted the sheep onto the roof to eat grass that was grown to maintain humidity in the building to stop the flax from breaking.

The site has been empty for about 20 years and was a mail order warehouse before plans for luxury fashion brand Burberry to use it were abandoned in 2017.

Temple Works also received a £1m boost for repairs in 2022 from Historic England.

Leeds Civic Trust said it was concerned at the news the £10m grant could be withdrawn, as the building was "vulnerable" and could only survive with government subsidy.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government said £3bn had been committed to local growth in the Budget, but added that having "inherited £22bn of unfunded spending commitments" it had had to make the "difficult decision" to review some previously announced projects.

The BBC has approached the building's owners, CEG, for further comment.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.

Following months of painting a somewhat pessimistic picture of the economic situation, the Chancellor struck the right note when she said: “My belief in Britain burns brighter than ever and the prize on offer is immense”.

The prize indeed is immense. Not just for the Labour party, this Government or Rachel Reeves herself But for the country at large.

When the Tories first returned to government as part of the Coalition in 2010, they embodied a sense of purpose. Central to it was dealing with the inequalities that stretched across the country.

While a near decade and half of austerity have only served to push many communities further back, people wanted to see a brighter future for themselves and the country.

It was good to see the Chancellor and MP for Leeds West and Pudsey say the “only way to improve living standards and the only way to drive economic growth is to invest, invest, invest”.

No place has needed investment more than the North and that is why confirmation of funding for the entire Transpennine Route Upgrade will be welcomed across Yorkshire.

Treasury documents confirmed that the Transpennine Route Upgrade would be used to “transform northern rail connectivity and lay the ground for Northern Powerhouse Rail”.

Faster, more reliable services are indeed central to growing the economy across the North. The disappointment of the curtailment of HS2 will still be felt in the region as Northern Powerhouse Rail would have gone hand in hand with it.

Confirmation of funding for the Supertram in Sheffield and West Yorkshire’s mass transit system is also to be welcomed.

The Government must hold its nerve and deliver transport investment. There have been far too many false dawns and as a result trust in Westminster is at a premium.

THE Mayor of West Yorkshire has said the Autumn budget presents “real challenges” for the county but is pleased with the backing for three key transport projects.

Meanwhile, Bradford Council has welcomed the Budget as the "first steps towards restoring funding for councils which is so badly needed".

Labour MP for Leeds West and Pudsey and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves created history today by being the first woman to deliver a Budget.

Ms Reeves said: “Today is the first time in our country’s history that a Budget will be delivered by a woman.

“For every young girl watching, let this be a sign that there should be no ceiling on your ambitions.”

(Image: Jordan Pettitt/PA) The Budget will increase taxes by £40 billion, as the Chancellor promised to “fix the foundations” of the economy and repair public finances after the Conservatives left behind a £22 billion “black hole”.

Ms Reeves claimed the scale of the public spending problems she inherited was worse than previously thought.

She said: “Any Chancellor standing here today would face this reality. And any responsible Chancellor would take action.”

National insurance contributions for employers will increase from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent from April 2025, with a lower starting threshold – from £9,100 to £5,000.

The national minimum wage for over-21s will also rise from £11.44 to £12.21 per hour from the same month.

There will be a £22.6 billion increase in the day-to-day health budget as well as a £3.1 billion increase in the capital budget, which Ms Reeves called the “largest real-terms growth in day-to-day NHS spending outside of Covid since 2010”.

The Budget will deliver the next steps in the Government’s approach to regional growth, through investment, devolution, and reform.

One of these steps is increasing the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements, which will fund a variety of projects including the continued development of West Yorkshire Mass Transit.

The Government has also committed to securing delivery of the TransPennine Route Upgrade and maintaining momentum on Northern Powerhouse Rail by progressing planning and design works to support future delivery.

Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, is happy to hear of support for transport projects in the county, including investment in Bradford Forster Square, but is aware the business community in particular may struggle with some of the decisions.

She said: “Today is a significant moment for our country as Rachel Reeves smashes the glass ceiling and becomes the first-ever woman to deliver a Budget in Parliament.”

Ms Brabin added: “While some of these decisions present real challenges for our region – especially for our business community - this must be balanced against the increase in the national minimum wage, support for the NHS, and prioritising longer-term investment in infrastructure.

“I was pleased to hear the Chancellor back our West Yorkshire Mass Transit programme, the Transpennine Route Upgrade and investment in Bradford Forster Square station.

“We have ambitious plans for our region that will deliver growth and put more money in people’s pockets, and we will work with this Government to deliver them.”

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, Leader of Bradford Council, said: "We await confirmation of some of the detail but it’s great to see the huge investment in the NHS and the first steps towards restoring funding for councils which is so badly needed.

"Public services have been left on their knees after 14 years of austerity from the Tory Government.

"The Chancellor’s focus on infrastructure spending as a means to support growth matches strongly with our own ambition here in the Bradford district.

"We want to work with government constructively to deliver for all our communities across the district.

"We’re a large significant district, right in the heart of the North.

"For the country to succeed, Bradford district needs to succeed, and we’re ready, willing and able to play our part."

Positives for businesses and the public include a freeze on fuel duty next year, as well as draught duty being cut by 1.7 per cent, taking a penny off pints in pubs.

But the West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce said the changes to national insurance contributions and an uplift in minimum wage represent “significant increases in overheads for businesses at a time when costs are already under significant pressure”.

Mark Casci, head of policy and representation, said it will mean “real headaches for businesses” and that “any plans to invest or create jobs will now become far more difficult”.

He added: “Tax is now the number one cost pressure cited by businesses here in Yorkshire and that situation will be exacerbated by these decisions.

“In the months ahead, employers of all size will be hoping to see the cost burden they face begin to recede so that they can invest and innovate to drive the national economy forward.”

Inheritance tax thresholds will be frozen for a further two years until 2030.

Other changes include a flat-rate of duty for all vaping liquid from October 2026, a one-off increase in tobacco duty to encourage people to give up smoking, and an increase in the soft drinks industry levy to account for inflation.

There will be “over £5 billion of Government investment” in housebuilding, with £1 billion to strip dangerous cladding from buildings.

Ms Reeves promised £1.4 billion to rebuild more than 500 schools, along with £2.1 billion for school maintenance.

The Chancellor promised to save £4.3 billion a year from the cost of welfare by tackling fraud and recovering debt.

Labour MP for Shipley Anna Dixon, who took over from long-standing MP Sir Philip Davies in July, said: “I am delighted that the Chancellor personally referenced my efforts to stand up for carers in her Budget speech.

"She announced plans to raise the Carer’s Allowance earnings limit by £45 per week, allowing over 60,000 more carers to access the allowance.

“I am proud of our Labour government that is fixing the foundations, delivering change by fixing the NHS, and working people face no tax rises."

She added: "The Chancellor is also the first woman to deliver a Budget in this country.

"I hope that this, along with my election as the first woman MP for Shipley, will inspire young girls across our local area to believe that there should be no ceiling to their ambition."

MP for Bradford South Judith Cummins said: “As Deputy Speaker, it has been a privilege to chair the robust debate on this important budget.

“This budget must deliver for everyone in Bradford South, promoting better health outcomes, better jobs, and a strong and secure future for us all.”

Bradford East MP Imran Hussain said: "After 14 years of successive Tory Budgets from her predecessors that stifled growth, deterred investment, and took an axe to our public services with cruel austerity cuts, the Chancellor has today delivered a Budget that finally begins to turn the page on these 14 years of failure which devastated places like Bradford.

“Faced with an NHS in crisis after more than a decade of Tory underfunding, the Chancellor was right to listen to the calls for greater healthcare investment today, and I’m glad she’s set out what is the biggest funding increase for our NHS outside of the pandemic since 2010 to upgrade GP surgeries, open new surgical hubs, deliver more care in our neighbourhoods, and cut the number of people who’ve spent months stuck on waiting lists.

“Further announcements on abolishing the non-dom tax regime that helps the very richest escape paying their fair share of tax, as well as on hiking Capital Gains Tax paid on the sale of shares and business assets to fund the task of fixing our public services, whilst also increasing the National Minimum Wage to leave the lowest paid £1,400 better off means there is no doubt that unlike the austerity of the last 14 years, this is a Budget that will begin to address the issues facing working people in Bradford.”

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One of the great success stories in urban transport during the 1970s and 1980s was Barbara Castle’s celebrated 1968 Transport Act, which enabled the establishment of the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (PTE) in 1974. For the first time, locally elected councillors were in charge of our trains.

Transforming West Yorkshire’s commuter rail networks

Within a decade, there were massive transformations on West Yorkshire’s hitherto declining commuter rail networks. Substantial investment was made in new rolling stock, stations, and new sections of track – even the belated electrification of parts of the urban network, including the Airedale and Wharfedale lines north of Leeds and Bradford, financed not by the UK government but by the European Regional Development Fund, primarily to help Bradford as a depressed part of Europe.

Metro became the standard brand for all local trains, and carriages were painted in attractive maroon livery, which was also used for timetables, posters and other publicity. Colour-coded Underground-style maps were prepared for the 12 lines under PTE control, so that interchange between lines at key nodal stations was easy to understand. Service frequencies were augmented with half-hourly services on most commuter lines – hourly in the evenings and on Sundays.

Monthly or annual multimodal MetroCards were issued, and fares simplified with Continental-style standardised fares between bus and rail systems. Cheap off-peak fares were introduced for pensioners, as well as a range of popular ‘Day Rover’ fares to offer unrivalled leisure trips by bus and train throughout the county.

Marketing the rail and bus networks

Marketing of both rail and bus networks was superb. As well as printed leaflets and brochures, local television advertising was used (these were the days before internet) with imaginative schemes to entice people back onto the trains. This included a cartoon fox known as ‘Squicka’ in British Rail uniform, pointing out how much ‘quicker’ Metro Train was, compared to congested roads.

This marketing was highly effective. Passenger numbers soared, and what had been a sorry Beeching era of decline in rail use, was reversed. This in turn encouraged investment in new infrastructure. Between 1974 and 2000, a total of 23 new stations were opened in West Yorkshire.

Privatisation and decline of our transport network

But from the late 1980s, starting with the infamous 1985 Transport Act, which led to disastrous privatisation of largely municipally owned or nationalised bus networks, followed by the privatisation of British Rail between 1994 and 1997, the Metro success was, step by lethal step, put into reverse.

Things worsened markedly after 2014, when West Yorkshire PTE lost many of its reduced operation and marketing resources during austerity and became a mere committee of the new West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA). Many people consider the WYCA to be a top-heavy bureaucratic organisation with little interest in marketing, beyond self-promotion. Printed timetables were totally dispensed with, despite the fact that many older people and other minorities who depend on public transport, rely on print as their prime source of information – something the best transport operators understand very well.

Predictably, passenger growth stagnated, but still (pre-Covid), about 70 million trips per annum were made by rail within West Yorkshire.

By 2020 and the calamity of Covid, when heavy government messaging warned travellers not to use public transport, it was clear that the rail network was in trouble, as passenger numbers plummeted. Although the situation has improved, particularly for buses with the imaginative £2 maximum fare strategy, the railways have seen no such upturn.

Poor marketing and crippling restrictions

However, passenger numbers have largely recovered, especially into Leeds, where traffic congestion and high parking charges are an incentive to use public transport, but also for many leisure journeys. Yet Day Rover and other off-peak leisure tickets are not marketed in any way but are subject to crippling restrictions.

This is true even in the school holidays, with travel embargoes between 4pm and 6.30pm, the very time most families need to return home, thus negating the value of the ticket. The pathetic excuse that this is because of potential overcrowding, belies the fact that most return journeys are contraflow: heading from outlying tourist destinations into urban centres.

Even though local train operator Northern is now nationalised again, the company is far removed from local control and passenger involvement. Users of local train services and stations have come to learn that their local elected members no longer have any effective control or even a say on issues such as service levels or fares. Only four new stations have been opened in West Yorkshire since 2000, compared to 23 in the previous 26 years. A fifth, White Rose Centre near Leeds, has been mired in a nightmare of mismanagement and overspend that should be the subject of a public inquiry.

Environment

byColin Speakman

17 October 2024

Bradford transport woes

In the City of Bradford, which will be the UK City of Culture in 2025, matters have come to a head. Unsurprisingly, the city that will be hosting a wide range of events, not just in the city centre but also in outlying towns within Bradford District, most especially in the Aire and Wharfe valleys. This includes Keighley, Saltaire and Ilkley, where off-peak train services were slashed by 50% between 9.30am and 3pm during Covid as a ‘temporary’ measure but have not been restored.

This has led to a massive reduction in services, especially at Shipley station to and from Wharfedale and Airedale, with connections now sometimes requiring 50-minute waits. Baildon, an important commuter station on the Bradford-Ilkley line, has also suffered a significant drop in passenger revenue after the line was closed for five months due to a landslip, with no attempt made to boost numbers by marketing even the partially restored services.

Things have clearly come to a crunch when the leader of Bradford Council and chair of WYCA, Cllr Susan Hincliffe, surely a major figure of authority on West Yorkshire’s rail network, formally calls for the restoration of the off-peak services from Bradford along the two key lines for 2025. So far, however, this request has been ignored by both Northern and the Department of Transport, on the grounds that this would increase costs. Clearly, Bradford’s needs are not a priority, not even to support a major cultural event that is so vital to its economic recovery.

Great West Yorkshire train robbery

It is all too clear that unelected bureaucrats now control what happens on the West Yorkshire Rail network on the grounds that declining passenger numbers, a result of their own failures, justify further cuts. Curtailments to Sunday and evening services could soon follow.

Meanwhile, traffic congestion in both the Aire and Wharfe valleys grows to horrific levels, with local bus services becoming synonymous with unreliability. This itself fuels ever-greater dependence on cars and runs counter to all pretence of reducing pollution and climate emissions in the face of catastrophic climate change.

Bradford, of all UK cities, deserves support. Once again, our London-centred government is damaging the North. So much for ‘levelling-up’.

In West Yorkshire, away from Leeds, we seem to have returned to the Beeching era of closures by stealth: a spiral of decline as services deteriorate even on some routes with shorter peak-hour trains, compounded by poor information and a total lack of marketing, leading to further reductions. The recently published (2024) West Yorkshire Combined Authority Rail Strategy is full of pious hopes and wordy generalisations, but mostly reads like a work of fiction that is very different from the realities on the ground.

The brutal truth is that control of West Yorkshire railways has been taken away from the people of Yorkshire through various acts of political subterfuge and handed back to faceless bureaucrats in Whitehall. The Great West Yorkshire Train Robbery.

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