Campaigners are set to complain to government watchdogs after councillors approved a £25 million hi-tech park.

Bradford Council has thrown out two previous complaints by Baildon Residents Against Inappropriate Development (BRAID) over the business park in Buck Lane, Baildon.

The campaign group accused the Council of “maladministration” because, they say, councillors were deprived of pertinent information which led to them giving the go-ahead.

Steve Walker, chairman of BRAID, told the Telegraph & Argus the group was compiling a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.

“We have still not had any satisfactory answers from Bradford Council as to why this was allowed,” he said.

“We sent the Council an initial complaint, which they rejected, and a second complaint which they didn’t really deal with at all.”

Their complaint is that the site is contaminated, a claim rejected by senior officers at a meeting of the planning panel when the development was approved.

They also claim councillors were given incorrect legal advice that the area was earmarked for business development in the Council’s planning policies and that “the councillors’ hands were tied”, said Mr Walker.

He said: “If the members of the planning committee had been properly directed they may well have considered it more appropriate to look at some of the other 86 empty commercial properties which lie unused in Baildon and Shipley.”

The Council has now agreed to carry out a second survey for contamination to find out whether the results of a study in 1999 still stand. Wildlife experts will carry out a study of animals, including bats, at the site.

Andy Taylor, Bradford Council’s economic development programmes manager, said: “Further contamination and biodiversity surveys are being undertaken at Buck Lane over the coming months as part of the conditions of the planning approval. We expected to carry these out at this point in the year as part of the continued development of the site.”

  • Read the full story in Monday's T&A