DATES and provisional timetables have now been set for the fourth stage of hearings into Calderdale Council’s draft Local Plan.

Planning Inspector Katie Child, who is overseeing the inquiry, will conduct the hearings online by video conferencing – the last two stages of hearings were screened on Calderdale Council’s YouTube channel – on Wednesday, September 29, and Thursday, September 30.

On Wednesday, September 29, the morning session, starting at 10am, will consider representations on air quality including assessment methodology and results.

These will include implications of high nitrogen oxide concentrations in areas including Brighouse, Clifton, Halifax and Ainley Top.

Supplementary analysis of air quality in Brighouse, Clifton and West Vale will also be considered, as well as the implications for development at the Crosslee site at Brighouse Road, Hipperholme.

The afternoon session, from 2pm, will provisionally cover air quality work in Habitat Regulations assessments, including traffic modelling.

The session is provisional pending completion of a Statement of Common Ground between the council and Natural England, due to be published on September 10, at which the hearings programme and agenda will be updated.

The morning session from 10am on Thursday, September 30, will consider waste sites, including how proposed sites at Atlas Mill Road, Brighouse, and Lacy Way, Elland, might be constrained.

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Regeneration Action Areas will also be considered, including potential canalside developments at Brighouse and at Rose Street, Todmorden.

The final session, from 2pm that day, will examine further a topic which has been discussed at every one of the four hearing stages, housing supply, including adjusted lead-in times for the potential Garden Suburbs at Woodhouse and Thornhill, both near Brighouse, and a site at Lower Edge Road, Elland.

A Friday morning – October 1 – is set aside as a reserve session only if it is needed.

Anyone wanting to participate in any of the hearing sessions should contact the hearings’ programme officer by 5pm, Friday, September 3, at the latest.

Ms Child will ultimately decide whether or not the plan, which could see around 9,970 new homes built in Calderdale into the 2030s, is “sound.”

If she does, following other steps in the process, the council’s Cabinet will then be asked to make a recommendation on the plan, with the responsibility of approving it  being given to all councillors at a full council meeting early next year.