RESIDENTS hope councillors “will have the bottle” to reject a massive Amazon warehouse proposed for farmland near Cleckheaton.

It comes as fears grow over whether the facility – dubbed a “monolith” by one critic – will actually create the 1,500 jobs that has led Kirklees Council to back the scheme.

That figure is sounding alarm bells with locals who say Amazon sites in other parts of the country have not delivered on their employment promises.

The 59-acre site at Cleckheaton, on farmland between Whitehall Road, Whitechapel Road and the M62, is considered “acceptable in principle” to planning officers with the council as it would contribute towards the authority’s target of delivering 23,000 jobs by 2031.

A parallel scheme at Haydock near St Helens indicated the creation of between 2,500 and 5,000 jobs in exchange for 60 acres of green fields being sacrificed to deliver the plan.

Locals living in Haydock say only a few hundred jobs have materialised since the site opened in October 2019.

Plan for giant warehouse near Cleckheaton is slammed

However they have to cope with hundreds of HGV movements every day, with some lorries parking on local roads and not on site.

The Cleckheaton site is close to housing, a horticultural nursery, a golf course and a cemetery.

It has space earmarked on site for nearly 200 HGVs as well as 900 cars and vans leading to concerns that local routes will become clogged.

In addition there are fears that between six and ten HGVs could go in or out of the site every minute.

People in Cleckheaton living close to the proposed site said: “Hardly any staff have been recruited at the St Helens facility.

“It is another angle on why this development should not go through.

“I sincerely hope that when this comes for approval for full planning approval that Kirklees councillors will have the bottle to reject the application.”

A report to the council’s Strategic Planning Committee on June 3 described a proposal “of significant scale” with a total floorspace of 265,600sqm.

It would be a third of a kilometre long, 178m wide and 23m high.

It is set to return to the committee as a formal planning application later this month.