Keighley Pride in Place: town challenges and opportunities

The Neighbourhood Board will prioritise investment in

  1. Regeneration, High Streets and Heritage;
  2. Transport;
  3. Work, Productivity & Skills; and;
  4. Safety and Security.

Challenges related to Thriving Places include:

  • Town Centre Resilience where the town has more outlets than the national average (3.1 per 1,000 residents vs 2.5 nationally). The town centre has poor accessibility issues, poorly maintained buildings and a lack of a night-time economy with low levels of footfall. Retail and leisure vacancies are also significantly higher than the national average (10.4% in 2025).
  • Slow Growth, Low Value Economy where since 2015, Keighley has witnessed decline in the number of businesses operating in the town and the number of jobs they support. There are only 53 Full Time Equivalent per 100 working age residents compared to 75 across West Yorkshire and 79 nationally. This presents a clear need for targeted interventions that address the need to bring in higher value business activities including securing new investment.
  • Acute Deprivation and Health Challenges in part stemming from long-standing effects of post-industrial decline. Analysis of deprivation data (IMD 2019) highlights significant areas of deprivation in the town (and the wider district). This ultimately has a profound impact on communities, and a holistic cross-policy approach is required to tackle legacy deprivation challenges.
  • Addressing Crime, including Domestic Violence where, at almost twice the national levels, the prevalence of recorded crime locally is a concern for people. We can seek to address the town’s crime rates, through a mix of preventative measures, and West Yorkshire Police and the Community Safety Partnership continue to work on tackling the big issues.
  • Community Pride and Social Trust where net social trust levels are known to be low. According to Onward (2023), Keighley has a social trust score of -8% which is lower than the England average of -3%. Keighley has a rich diversity, with around a third of residents being from non-white ethnic backgrounds, but with limited spaces and events programmes to bring communities together.

Opportunities relating to Thriving Places include:

  • Cultural, Heritage and Environmental Assets where some of the most treasured built assets can be better celebrated. This would include tasteful restoration of existing buildings to bring renewed life and bringing derelict commercial buildings back into use. Complementary to this, there are opportunities to better connect the offerings of Keighley and Bronte Country, and for improved connections between the town centre and the town’s parks.
  • Ensuring and Retaining Young Talent where the town retains a very strong younger and working-age demographic (86% aged below 65 vs 81% nationally) and this means that the town benefits from a strong pipeline of talented individuals into the labour force. The town’s education sector focuses on providing programmes aligned with local employment needs and offers both academic and vocational development for learners of all ages.
  • Transformation Underway through the advent of £53.4m of Local Regeneration Fund initiatives. Keighley is making great strides towards targeted, town-wide regeneration. Spearheaded by the Neighbourhood Board, we are now beginning to bear the fruits of £53.4m of strategic investments being delivered, in-delivery or planned over the past 4-5 years.
  • Improved Town Sports, Recreation and Leisure Offer with Keighley’s proud sporting heritage with various long-standing sporting assets and teams across the town. There is opportunity to build on this success, in part to bring communities better together and to help prevent crime. While Keighley has some great cultural assets, much of the more day-to-day leisure offer is limited to park recreation and Keighley Picture House. There is however an opportunity to further develop and sustain a varied programme of events including those already developed by the Town Improvement Plan.
  • Good Jobs Growth where we see significant potential to encourage greater levels of self-containment, in part by better matching residents to job opportunities, but also by extending and diversifying the overall jobs offer in the town by encouraging new businesses to form. Currently, jobs density in Keighley is very low as for every 100 working-age residents, there are 53 FTE jobs in the town, compared to 75 regionally and 79 nationally.

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