A VILLAGE conservation group has planned to continue fighting plans to build a housing estate in Addingham.

Changes to a planning application by Redrow Homes (Yorkshire) to build on land between Skipton Road and School Lane cut no ice with members of Addingham Civic Society.

Chairman Don Barrett said: "It has not made any difference we will still be objecting to it."

The original application included 23 houses with related road construction and site works but it was rejected by Bradford planning bosses.

Redrow Homes has appealed against the decision and the hearing is due to take place before a Department of the Environment inspector in November at Ilkley Town Hall.

But the development company has also submitted another planning application featuring a reduction to 22 houses on the site which should go before the Keighley Area planning committee next month.

Bradford planners have already given outline planning permission to build houses on the site and consider it a case of getting the details right with the developers.

But Mr Barrett said that objections to the original application still stood and the Civic Society will be sending objections to the appeal hearing.

"We don't feel this development is in the village style - it looks more like a town housing estate," said Mr Barrett.

Among other objections, Civic Society members felt the development would adversely effect the setting of the listed buildings in The Green, at the corner of the sight, and the view across the fields to Beamsley would be spoiled.

The land is an irregular shaped sloping cow pasture, measuring about two acres, with the village Conservation Area running along its boundary.

Addingham Parish Council has not objected to the development with the condition that the footpath running through it should maintained.

When the original planning application was advertised, 15 objection letters were received by the council as well as a petition containing 267 signatures.

The site was designated as housing land under the Bradford Unitary Development Plan - the planning blueprint for the next few years.

A spokesman for the planning department said Redrow Homes would be likely to withdraw its appeal to the Department of the Environment if the second application was successful next month.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.