PLANS to build houses on a field in Keighley have been approved, despite objections.

Members of Bradford Council’s Keighley and Shipley Area Planning Panel heard a number of objectors speak out against plans to build six homes on a site off Braithwaite Road, Keighley, at a meeting yesterday.

The application, by Executors of J Baxendall (Deceased), was for land that was a green field surrounded by the Green Belt, but not Green Belt itself.

Keighley Town Councillor Martin Walker spoke against the plans at yesterday's meeting in Keighley Town Hall, telling the panel that on a recent visit to the site he saw Red Admiral butterflies, a curlew and a goldfinch, adding: “This is nature at it’s best. It is not appropriate to build on it.”

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Objectors also said the entrance to the site, from cul-de-sac, Ryan Grove, was not wide enough to accommodate the extra traffic the homes would create.

But officers said the land was not protected, and that there was a shortage of housing sites across the district.

Members then voted to approve the plans.