CAMPAIGNERS against unwanted development are celebrating after a plan to demolish a Middleton house and replace it with flats was thrown out by planning bosses.

But objectors to the scheme have been warned while they may have won a battle, they have not yet won the war.

The Keighley area planning committee visited Ilkley to examine the effects of two major planning applications.

The application to build a block of flats next to green belt and recreation land at 16 Middleton Avenue had been described by former Yorkshire and England cricketer Bob Appleyard as a 'monstrosity which was in danger of turning Ilkley into Legoland'.

While Mr Appleyard, of Middleton Avenue, had to appear at the Headingley Test Match to lobby the MCC for money for junior cricket, other objectors took up the cudgels at Keighley Town Hall.

Both district councillor Martin Smith (Con, Ilkley) and parish council planning chairman Audrey Brand appealed to the committee to throw out the plan - despite the planning officer's recommendation that it should be given the go-ahead.

Coun Smith said: "I am totally against this destruction of Ilkley's special openness to the green belt and the infringement on the landscape around the recreation facilities within the green belt."

Coun Brand said: "It is totally out of scale with any surrounding dwellings - I am appealing to the committee that they recommend refusal of this application."

After the committee turned down the plan, Coun Brand told the Gazette: "It just shows that the committee listens to us."

Coun Smith said: "I am quite pleased that they supported the principle that the green belt is very important to Ilkley and should not be desecrated by developers in this manner."

But it was not all good news for conservationists in the town as the planning committee followed officer recommendations to allow developers to knock down another large Ilkley house, Whinfield, in Hebers Ghyll Drive, and replace it with four detached homes.

It was the plan that sparked off moves for Ilkley to have its own Town Design Statement and a campaign to extend the Conservation Area.

After visiting the site, members of the planning panel insisted that the houses would have to be around four-feet lower than the submitted plan.

Local resident Edith Ridgway, of Ghyll Wood, said she was disappointed in the committee's decision.

"It is stressful for the residents that all these houses are coming down and people will be feeling very sad," she said.

Mrs Ridgway warned those celebrating the Middleton Avenue decision that the developers who wanted to build the flats were likely to go back to the drawing board and submit a new scheme in the future which would be more acceptable to planning bosses.

She said that was what happened with the Whinfield plan, as an earlier application to built seven houses on the site had been rejected by the planning panel.