CAMPAIGN groups fighting development across the district are gearing up for their next big battle.

Next month, a Government planning inspector will examine Bradford Council's blueprint for housebuilding across the district over the next 15 years.

The Council’s emerging Local Plan sets out roughly where 42,100 homes should be built across the district by 2030, on a mixture of green fields and previously-developed land.

But the Labour-led authority’s plan has sparked protests, mainly by campaigners calling for development to be kept off the Green Belt.

The plan’s ‘core strategy’ will now be put under the microscope by Government inspector Stephen Pratt, who will decide whether it is sound.

He will hold the public examination from March 4 to 20 at Victoria Hall, Saltaire, with dozens of pressure groups, politicians and developers set to argue their case.

One of those planning to appear at the hearing is Terry Brown, of the Greenhill Action Group (GAG), which has been fighting development on green fields near Bingley.

Mr Brown said: "We have really got to question whether Bingley can support the 1,400 houses that the Council has deemed necessary for Bingley, because they want to allocate it as a principal town."

Councillor Val Slater, executive member for planning at Bradford Council, said one of the main topics for debate was likely to be the number of houses planned.

She said: "We are pretty confident we have got the numbers right, because we have been through quite robust evidence, but local people think we have set the number too high, and developers think we have set it too low."

The Council's Labour leaders have been accused of failing to grasp the nettle by setting a Local Plan quickly enough, leaving the district open to a development free-for-all in the meantime.

But Cllr Slater said: "People say we have dragged our feet. We haven't.

"There is a lot of evidence-gathering and testing, and we try to do that to make sure that when we have got to this stage we are not wasting people's time, that we can get it through."

The Council's Conservative group is opposing the Local Plan, concerned at proposals to develop 900 acres of the Green Belt.

Councillor Simon Cooke, planning spokesman for the Conservative opposition, said: "The way in which the plan is structured means there isn't any hope at all of the brownfield former industrial sites in Bradford, in the city itself, being developed without there being an enormous amount of public subsidy - and that just isn't available."

If the inspector approves the strategy, specific sites will be earmarked for housing or business use at a later stage.

It is expected to take up to three years for the plan to come into effect.