Campaigners are in a last ditch battle to save green fields from housing.

More than 100 objections - most of them from Heaton - have been received by Bradford Council in the final round of consultations into the planning blueprint which will carry the district over the next ten years.

Inspectors recommended at the end of a mammoth public inquiry into the district's replacement Unitary Development Plan two years ago that Ashwell Farm could be developed for housing after 2009.

The final consultation on the findings ended yesterday at midnight on a handful of sites where there are technical issues - including Ashwell Mills.

And the Heaton campaigners who raised funds for their own planning consultants still hope for an 11th hour victory.

Secretary of Heaton Township Association Elizabeth Hellmich said: "We believe there was a failure to provide adequate reasons for the exceptional circumstances for the removal of land from the green belt."

Government inspectors dealt with 7,000 objections to the UDP which will be the yard stick for all planning applications when it is adopted by the Council later this year.

It saw developers objecting to the Council's bid to preserve the countryside and there were winners and losers following the nine-month inquiry which cost about £1 million.

Housing designation was removed from Denholme Road in Oxenhope, Manor Garth in Addingham and other contentious sites.

But among the potential losers was the Greenhill Action Group which sent in 1,550 objections to the Council's proposal to keep Sty Lane at Micklethwaite, Bingley, earmarked for housing some time after 2009.

The Ashwell Farm campaigners have organised petitions signed by hundreds of people and won the support of Bradford West MP Marsha Singh.

Other areas which have just gone through the final consultation process are a piece of land deleted from an employment site at Black Dyke Mills, Queensbury and an area designated as public open space at Crow Nest, Bingley.

Bradford Council's executive member for the environment Councillor Anne Hawkesworth said all representations would be considered carefully and referred to the authority's legal advisers if necessary.

A report on the consultation and details of representations made will go to the Council's decision-making executive committee next month.