A positive, ambitious and unifying vision for our brilliant district
Susan Hinchcliffe is a Bradford Council candidate for Windhill and Wrose at the 2026 local elections 🗳️
Bradford District Labour has a positive, ambitious and unifying vision for our brilliant district. Called Better Bolder Bradford, we are the only political group in the Bradford district to have a manifesto.
By listening to residents in all parts of the district, we’ve prioritised funding for what people care about most – more youth services, more investment into enforcement and increasing our support for those people looking for work.
It’s been an exciting year for the district as the UK’s City of Culture 2025, which brought both inward investment and new opportunities for residents. It was the Labour group’s strong leadership that harnessed cross-party support for the City of Culture, which brought more than three million people to events across our city, towns, villages and green spaces, and residents from all 30 wards took part.
We are extremely fortunate to have cultural gems in every part of our district – from Ilkley Manor House and the Ilkley Literature Festival to Keighley’s Cliffe Castle Museum and Park, the World Heritage Site of Saltaire and the former Bradford Odeon which is now reborn as a top-class music and events venue in Bradford Live.
We are also attracting inward investment in the low-carbon technologies of the future. Our transition to a zero-emission, fully electric bus fleet will now be delivered 18 months earlier than originally planned; the Bradford Low Carbon Hydrogen project will utilise £120 million of private sector and £500 million of government investment to stimulate the production and demand for low carbon hydrogen; Bradford City Hall will be the first Grade I Listed building in the UK to connect to a heat network, removing 1.5MW of gas fired boilers; mass transit will finally bring back trams linking Bradford and Leeds once again as part of our shared vision with mayor Tracy Brabin; and through our successful street lighting project we have successfully replaced 14,507 columns and 47,268 lanterns across the district delivering energy cost savings of around £9 million and CO2 reductions of around 2,500 tonnes.
We are also supporting the environment on a local level, where the council has been supporting the proposed Ilkley Wetland as part of much-needed initiatives to improve the water quality of the River Wharfe and boost biodiversity.
Our support alongside residents and partners for the nature reserves at Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits and Burley Sun Lane, as well as considering new biodiversity assessment on land that had been marked for disposal just outside of Burley, are more examples of our progress.
Together with the new national park, our flood prevention work on Ilkley Moor and the planting of over 56,000 sphagnum moss plugs, targeted blanket bog and upland heathland restoration, our partnership work is making a difference.
We are also cleaning up our air in the Bradford district. NHS research has found that the air quality improvements from the clean air zone have resulted in 598 fewer GP visits each month for respiratory issues – an amazing statistic that shows how we are helping people to stay healthier for longer while also saving vital health service funds. Again, Labour locally is making a difference.
In our council budget this year, which was approved by full council, we are reinvesting in the bread-and-butter services that residents tell us matter the most and which were constrained for so long during the austerity years.
We are putting more money back into street cleaning, into parks maintenance and tree work and we will be reducing the fee for bulky waste collections from £50 down to £30.
We are also ramping up enforcement. We’ve increased the maximum fly-tipping fine to £1,000, we are spending £150,000 on more CCTV cameras to catch fly-tippers and we are holding a day of action with residents every day of the working week all year round to tackle hotspots all around the district.
We are also investing in more youth services and in extending our award-winning SkillsHouse jobs scheme because we believe in a better future. Over the last two years, SkillsHouse has helped 891 people into work and supported 713 people to move into education or training.
We believe in the Bradford district’s future. We are investing in good services and a thriving economy. Vote Labour locally for strong leadership that listens to residents and makes a real difference.
