CALLS have been made for Leeds to scrap seven years of work and ditch its planning blueprint.

The Leeds Unitary Development Plan, which will see Aireborough and Wharfedale through to 2006, could be adopted this summer.

Councillor Clive Fox (Con, Otley and Wharfedale) is calling for the council to scrap it and start a new plan.

But the council looks set to press ahead with the plan and believes another public inquiry would not be in the interest of

residents.

Coun Fox, who sits on the council's UDP Panel, says the revised draft UDP is flawed as it does not take into account new government guidelines about the use of previously developed 'brownfield' sites before greenbelt.

And at yesterday's full council meeting he was due to propose that the plan be dropped.

He said: "I believe that the plan is fundamentally flawed because it takes no account of government planning guidelines PPG3 which requires previously developed brownfield land to be developed before housing on greenfield sites can be considered.

"Work should commence on a new UDP which fully takes into account the government's current planning guidelines."

Last week the council's Executive Board considered responses to modifications in the plan and agreed to press ahead.

It could have recommended a fresh public inquiry but heard that many objections brought up by residents during last year's public consultation had already been debated at the public inquiry in front of a government inspector.

Members were told that there were new issues raised particularly to do with the new government guidelines concerning brownfield sites but that they could be dealt with through the UDP review or by the normal planning process.

A report to the board added that a second inquiry would mean further delay to the adoption of the plan which had already been in the making for more than seven years.

Coun Fox said once the plan is formally adopted green belt land could become developed.

And that last year's consultation into modifications proposed by the government inspector had been little more than a public relations exercise.

"Nearly 2,500 objections were received on 188 issues, a number of them extra housing sites in greenbelt identified by the inspector and all but a handful have been arbitrarily dismissed by the council's planners as being not new evidence and thus not worthy of consideration.

"The objectors included a dozen councillors and three MPs all of whom have been told effectively they were wasting their time."

Coun Fox said the council was basically ignoring the PPG3 guidelines.

"That is new evidence and the planners are hoping to get away with a bland addendum to the UDP which amounts to a token acknowledgement that PPG3 will need to be taken into consideration in due course. That is clearly nonsense as the planning minister Nick Raynsford has said on a number of occasions that PPG3 applies now, not when a local authority gets round to reviewing its planning policies."

He added that it seemed that the council was pressing for a plan to be in place as soon as possible.

'They seem to be saying life will come to an abrupt halt if there is no adopted UDP. "

l The plan will now be put on deposit to give people the chance to make comments on the new modifications. Only representations to the latest modifications will be taken into account.