Bradford Road in Cleckheaton set to re-open amid calls for long-term solution

Motorists have faced disruption and diversions over the past week following the burst. Bradford Road has been closed since last Tuesday (February 8) to allow engineers to repair the pipe between the junctions of Scott Lane and Wesley Street.

A Yorkshire Water spokesman said the road will re-open today, with traffic management in place.

The burst is the latest of several on the major route through Cleckheaton in recent months, leading to councillors in the town requesting a meeting with the utilities company about how to prevent similar scenarios occurring in future.

Cleckheaton ward councillor John Lawson, who is also the Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Kirklees Council, said: "After we have had about six bursts in the past four or five years, three of those in the past few months, the issue is getting worse. It's deteriorating.

"The long term solution would be replacement of the infrastructure. We know that would be difficult but people in Cleckheaton are reasonable and they would understand that to fix it we would have to get the road up.

"When something like this happens, it damages the road and sometimes it's in a way that you can't see for a year or so. It really gets into the structure of the road."

He added: "I'm concerned about the business impact on the town.

"It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to realise that if the centre of town is cut off three times in as many months, that is going to have an impact."

Coun Andrew Pinnock (Lib Dem, Cleckheaton), said: "It's happening with monotonous regularity. It's very frustrating.

"The answer might be that they can't do much about it. Whether they can stick something down the pipe and that can detect whether something is going to fail, I don't really know.

"The difficulty might be that you cannot detect where this is going to happen. The alternative is replacement of the whole lot, and that could be very expensive.

"It's causing a lot of frustration to people who live here, people who need to drive through there and to businesses in the town."

The Yorkshire Water spokesman said the company is looking to arrange a meeting with councillors to discuss the next steps.