Bradford is booming... population-wise, at least. And that could mean a whole lot of problems in store for the future.

Over the past decade the district’s population has been growing at a rate of 11.1 per cent, much higher than the national average of 7.1 per cent. And with more people comes greater strain on resources, infrastructure and services.

Bradford Council today outlines what it believes this will mean for the district. And there is no doubt the increasing population will have a big impact on housing, transport, schools, healthcare, to name just the obvious.

However, the figures need to be looked at very carefully, particularly in relation to housing, and the alarming figures in this report should not be allowed to open up the floodgates for development.

We need to be absolutely certain of the level of demand before the Council allocates swathes of our green spaces for development when the Local Plan, formerly the Local Development Framework, is finally revealed later this year.

And we need to be even more certain that every possible area of derelict urban land has been considered before this is allowed to happen.

There is no doubt that there is a crisis brewing in terms of the increasing population and the infrastructure needed to deal with that.

But at the same time, the district should not be rushed into a local plan that carves up our precious green space on the back of an admittedly alarming report.

The last thing we want to see is short-termism that leads to a flinging open of the doors for developers. The Council has to look at ways of meeting this demand without tearing up our countryside, and as our Save Our Green Spaces campaign has long highlighted, encouraging building on brownfield sites is one way to do this.