Calderdale councillors agree on tougher measures for anti-social behaviour by e-bike riders

Motion at full council was backed by all parties and council will now explore all options

Feb 15, 2026

Hello and welcome to The Calderdale Lead!

I hope you’re all having a better weekend than me - I sat through 90 minutes of dross at Turf Moor yesterday as my team Burnley were ‘dumped’ out of the FA Cup by League One Mansfield Town. Football, eh?

Anyway, enough of the moping, what have we got in this edition?

Well we’ve got details on how all parties have backed motions and proposals to tackle road safety issues - including anti-social behaviour committed by e-bike and e-scooter riders.

Plus, an update on the ‘hole’ that is causing issues between Todmorden and Hebden and more in the Calderdale Digest.

So, on with the news…

Calderdale Digest

🚔 Police are appealing for witnesses after a car was in collision with a pedestrian in Halifax.

Officers were called at 9.37am yesterday to reports of a collision on Ovenden Way at the junction with Athol Gardens.

A 69-year-old man was taken to hospital with serious injuries and remains in a critical condition in hospital.

The driver of the white Audi A3, a man aged 30, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of causing serious injury through dangerous driving and remains in police custody.

The vehicle was travelling from Halifax to Illingworth.

Officers from the Roads Policing Unit are appealing for any witnesses or dash-cam footage of the collision or the circumstances leading up to the collision to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police via 101 or use the live chat options at www.westyorkshire.police.uk/livechat, quoting log 434 of February 14.

🚧 The road between Todmorden and Hebden Bridge is likely to stay closed until at least Saturday (February 21) as Yorkshire Water carry out repairs.

Halifax Road, between the junction with Stoodley Glen in the Todmorden direction and the lay-by outside the property known as Rivendell in the Hebden Bridge direction, has been closed since Tuesday evening after a hole appeared in the carriageway.

Further investigations yesterday clarified that the damage to the road as a result of a leak on Yorkshire Water’s “clean water network”, says the company.

The leak has washed away soil around the pipe at Eastwood, leaving voids in the road which have caused it to close.

There is a signed diversion route will be via the A6033 through Littleborough, Blackstone Edge, Cragg Road, and into Mytholmroyd.

Yorkshire Water is working with Calderdale Council to provide a daily shuttle service between Todmorden and the closure point, running between 7am and 7pm.

A sewer collapse around half a mile away at Charlestown, closer to Hebden Bridge, closed the route for weeks either side of Christmas 2024 and took months to repair and re-instate in 2025.

Unity in the chamber as Calderdale councillors agree on road safety measures

By John Greenwood

Measures to curb the menace of anti-social behaviour from some e-bike and e-scooter riders should be introduced, including doubling the fines, councillors in Calderdale have agreed.

Clamping down on offenders should form part of Calderdale Council’s use of all the powers available to it to make roads safer with the goal of getting deaths and serious accidents on the borough’s roads down to zero, they said.

Councillors backed a Labour call for stepping up other measures including clamping down on pavement parking and using national legislation being introduced by the Government, such as adopting Moving Traffic Enforcement powers, where fines will be used to improve the condition of the borough’s roads.

And Labour councillors agreed to add to their motion the Liberal Democrat group proposals for tackling e-bike-related anti-social behaviour, including doubling fines from £100 to £200.

The group said: “The rising use of e-bikes and e-scooters is becoming a problematic issue for many neighbourhoods and poses a safety concern when used in an anti-social manner.”

Introducing the motion at a meeting of the full Calderdale Council, Cabinet member for Regeneration and Transport, Cllr Sarah Courtney, said as an example schools reported that poor driver behaviour was preventing parents from walking to school with their children.

The council and councillors needed to be championing better behaviour from drivers, she said – wanting to renew Calderdale’s commitment to Vision Zero – essentially trying to make the borough accident-free – remained a major issue across Calderdale, with 478 people injured on its roads in 2024, including 149 killed or seriously injured.

That meant using all the pressure and powers available to the authority, said Cllr Courtney.

Her Labour colleague Cllr Ann Kingstone agreed – every death or serious injury on the roads represented lives changed forever, families devastated and grieving, and the deaths were often preventable.

“Road safety is not anti-driver – it saves lives,” she said.

However, Reform’s Cllr Peter Hunt said getting safety measures such as speed bumps in place was often an uphill battle with the council – “the answer is always ‘computer says no’” – and called for practical actions.

Cabinet member for Children and Young People’s Services, Cllr Adam Wilkinson said he had some sympathy with what Coun Hunt was saying and speeding was probably the number one issue raised with councillors on the doorstep.

Lib Dem Cllr Sue Holdsworth said she had worked with highways officers to successful get some improvements in her ward of Greetland and Stainland.

Cllr Ashley Evans (Lib Dem, Warley) said the question of who would enforce measures needed to be raised and agreed actions should be practical.

Reasonable progress was being made on installing crossings but there was frustration over getting traffic regulation orders through, said Cllr Tim Swift, Cabinet member for Public Health.

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