A LOCAL community has stepped up to help an Addingham man paralysed in tragic biking accident. Jaime Lunn, 46, came off his mountain bike on Ilkley Moor on April 25 last year, sustaining spinal injuries at C6 level, leaving him with no sensation below his chest. After spending months in hospital he was finally allowed home on November 13, but he desperately needs that home adapting to allow himself and his family - partner Caroline McCullough and their children Florence, nine, and Seth, aged seven - to lead as normal a life as possible. The house is not suitable for someone in a wheelchair, with carpets, narrow doors and no accessible bathroom or kitchen.
From Sandy MacPherson,Ilkley Dear Editor: I was almost apoplectic with outrage at your front page headline and story about CCTV last week. Good Tory voters in Ilkley didn t vote for such unwarranted big brother intrusions nor for squandering money on such schemes. They voted to send MPs like Robbie Moore to Parliament to halve the amount of money raised in London to wasteful Councils like Bradford - to prevent such spendthrift behaviour. After all Bradford Council has already allocated 4 million for Ilkley Grammar school to replace perfectly good buildings and they have dissipated even more funds in keeping open a library here when they haven t bothered to do the same in the rest of the district. We are sturdy independent types who want to buy their own books, thank you very much! And we don t require nosey busybodies from Bradford spying on us good folk in Ilkley going about our business. Strange times indeed.
THE Ilkley Great Get Together is collaborating with Addingham based Kidfit to provide fruit and vegetables as part of the free school meal provision for families in Ilkley. The initiative is currently supporting 120 children in Ilkley, making sure they have a nutritious meal every day. The fruit and vegetables are being kindly donated by Morrisons supermarket and volunteers attend Ilkley Grammar School every morning to pack the food ready for distribution. Becky Malby, of The Ilkley Great Get Together said: “This is incredibly generous as we are doing this weekly through until half term when the funded Youth Association project takes over for the holidays.
NEARLY 90 local residents enjoyed a surprise Christmas treat, when volunteers from a local charity delivered the present of either a hamper or a potted plant to them in their homes. Organised by Ilkley and District Good Neighbours, the Christmas Parcel Project, which began some 25 years ago, has always brought an annual touch of seasonal good cheer to a number of the area’s older and less able residents; some of whom might feel lonely and isolated during the festive period. Ilkley Good Neighbours Trustee and Christmas Parcels Co-ordinator, Ed Duguid said: “At this particularly tough time for everyone and certainly for some of the older members of our community, we all agreed we had to find a way to deliver the annual Christmas Parcels and bring a smile to their faces.”