BRADFORD Council’s decision to refuse a company permission to store vehicles at a city centre site has been overturned by a planning inspector.

Earlier this year planning officers threw out a retrospective planning application that would allow Vertu Motors to continue storing hundreds of high end vehicles on a plot of land between Valley Road and the rail line leading into Forster Square Rail Station.

They said the plans would “result in an obtrusive feature in the streetscene along a public transport corridor to the detriment of the visual amenity of the area.”

The company appealed this decision soon after, and now a government appointed planning inspector has granted that appeal - questioning Bradford Council’s assertions that the site was out of character to the area.

The decision means the company will be able to keep storing vehicles on the land, as well as further developing the site.

Storage of high end cars on city centre site would 'spoil view' of area - according to planning officers

The application that has now been granted includes permission to store 360 cars and build a single-storey wash and valet bay facility, part two-storey workshop with Class 4 MoT, parts storage and ancillary accommodation, a single-storey portable cabin, screen panels to existing palisade fencing and landscaping.

Council planners had said the land ran alongside a key gateway into the city, and its use as car storage would provide a poor image of the city centre for people arriving by train.

The company says the vehicles are stored on the site prior to delivery at two dealership showrooms across West Yorkshire.

Before Vertu took on the site it was unoccupied scrubland.

The decision to overturn the Council’s decision was made by planning inspector Graeme Robbie.

Granting the appeal, he said: “I find there to be very little alien or uncharacteristic about the proposed layout and use of the appeal site or the scale, positioning, character or appearance of the wash bay and valet and workshops buildings.

“Indeed, much of the rail corridor’s landscape on its eastern side in the vicinity of the appeal site is comprised of the long rear boundaries of commercial and industrial plots and the service elevations of those buildings.

“The Council are concerned that the proposal does not make adequate provision for landscaping within the site’s layout.

“However, as I have noted the rail corridor provides a significant and verdant sylvan setting to the rear of the site.

“The proposal would bring a vacant and overgrown area of land into economic and active use with pockets of landscaping the total of which would, in my judgement, be greater than the sum of its parts.

“Nor would the parking of vehicles for storage and the purposes of delivery preparation and the presence of the proposed buildings would, in my judgement, be neither materially nor visually different from that which lies to the south, nor harmful to the character or appearance of Valley Road or the rail corridor.”