Bid to build 2,700 homes backed by Bradford councillors (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Housing planned for green belt land between Holme Wood and Tong

9:37pm Thursday 5th January 2012 in Holme Wood

Plans to build thousands of homes on green belt land between Holme Wood and Tong have been approved by a scrutiny committee.

Bradford Council’s Regeneration and Economy Overview and Scrutiny Committee tonight approved recommendations to go forward to the executive later this month.

Members heard how a three-month consultation had produced a mixed response, but were urged by local councillors to back the plan.

A report to the committee contained two options – to build either 600 or up to 2,700 homes.

Members were told that while respondents to the consultation were in favour of fewer homes being built, they supported opportunities which could result from the larger development.

Tong ward Councillor Alan Wainwright (Lab), chairman of the Holme Wood and Tong Partnership Board, told members he was in support of building more homes.

He said: “I would urge members to support option two. Whatever the outcome of today, and certainly when it goes through the executive, people should start getting behind this and start looking to the future.”

However, Canon Gordon Dey, chairman of the Save Tong and Fulneck Valley Association, said people were not prepared to lose green belt land for regeneration opportunities, which he would have preferred to be carried in an “evolutionary not revolutionary” manner.

He also said not enough consultation had been held into whether the area’s infrastructure could cope.

He said: “We have never had the infrastructure. All of this has never been properly or thoroughly discussed.

But ward Councillor Michael Johnson (Lab), also a member of the Holme Wood and Tong Partnership Board, said only a small part of the green belt was to be used.

He said: “It does take green belt and I think we need to be clear we would object to any further incursion beyond this because that would remove the lung between Leeds and Bradford and that lung, as a kid I used to play in and I still walk in.”