Concerns over extra traffic if ‘ suburb’ is allowed

CONCERNS OVER plans for the 1,250- home Woodhouse Garden Suburb have fuelled debate at hearings into Calderdale’s draft Local Plan.

The Local Plan is being scrutinised by planning inspector Katie Child, who said the site to the south of Brighouse had been subject to significant number of representations and a lot of concerns from residents who had got together to form Woodhouse Residents Association ( WRA). Concerns over roads, schools and other infrastructure issues have been raised.

Access to the site would be off RyecroftLaneandoffWoodhouse Gardens, with the scheme’s promoters, housing developer Redrow, marketing the 300- home phase of home building off Ryecroft Lane, the council’s planning lead, Richard Seaman said.

The second phase will include about 200 homes off Woodhouse Gardens.

WRA’s Carol French Deol said: “We have concern about how our existing roads will be expected to cope with the volume of traffic and we really believe the infrastructure needs to be there up front.”

Brian Crossley, of the Shelf and Northowram Local Plan Forum, said there were too many instances of issues being sorted out “later”.

“They are leaving so much to the planning application stage – this needs to be sorted out before it is allocated because it will be there forever. Residents will be left with these problems,” he said.

Unavailability of some parcels of land intended for access were raised by the Inspector, but Mr Seaman said the council did have compulsory purchase powers if negotiations proved unfruitful.