Campaigners fighting plans for a 475- home development on green fields near Bingley have received more than 1,000 votes of confidence in a single weekend.

The Greenhill Action Group (GAG) held a protest on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal towpath, gaining 729 new names on its petition of almost 5,000 signatures and receiving 276 objection letters to hand to Bradford Council about the proposals for the site, off Sty Lane, Micklethwaite.

Campaigners draped banners on a canal boat to promote their cause.

Action group chairman Terry Brown said of the petition: “When we get to 5,000 – I think that’ll be a magic number – we will hand it in to Bradford Council.

“The response to the campaign has been excellent. In the areas around the site there’s just over 2,000 houses, and the amount of signatures on our petition is a pretty damning condemnation of this development.

“There’s no way the roads can cope with it and there’s no way they should be building on those green fields.”

At a public forum on May 12, the group was told the developers would discuss residents’ concerns at a meeting. Mr Brown said they had not yet been given a date by the companies, Redrow Homes (Yorkshire) Ltd and Bellway Homes.

Shipley MP Philip Davies, who is backing the GAG campaign, said he had invited Housing and Local Government Minister Grant Shapps to visit Mickle-thwaite and talk to residents, and has also raised his concerns with Minister for Decentralisation Greg Clark.

Mr Davies said: “Greg Clark is certainly sympathetic to the situation we find ourselves in but is concerned about practicalities of retrospectively changing planning applications.

“I am sick to the back teeth of beautiful parts of countryside in my constituency being concreted over to build more and more houses in places which are not suitable.”

An outline planning application for the site has been submitted to the Council.

Bellway and Redrow declined to comment to the Telegraph & Argus.

e-mail: tanya.orourke@telegraphandargus.co.uk