Planners urge rejection of new housing on blighted coach park

Businessman Steve Rand wants to build 30 family-type houses with gardens on a four-and-a-quarter acre brown field site in Calderdale on the east side of St Giles Road within an area of open land between Lightcliffe and Hove Edge.

At present the Green Belt site, which is surrounded mainly by residential housing, is used for coach parking and garaging as well as a stone storage area.

The application has split local opinion, with supporters claiming the development will “remove an unsightly blight on the area” and the current use of the land for industrial purposes is an “anachronism” which should have been disposed of long ago.

And ward councillor Graham Hall said: “This particular site has previously been approved by the planning committee for outline permission for housing.

“The current parcel of land in Lightcliffe is detrimental to the visual amenity of the St Giles Road area and has been subjected to constant vandalism and antisocial behaviour over many years.

“A large number of local residents have intimated to me, that on balance, after taking all factors into account, the use of the site for housing would be preferable to the current existing and now virtually redundant usage.

“This application now represents an opportunity to resolve what has been seen by many as a problematic and unsightly outdated area.”

His colleague Coun David Kirton added: “I would like to add my support for the planning application.”

He explained: “The site has been in a poor, unkempt state for many decades due to the out-dated industrial use which is no longer required.

“Thirty new homes on the site would be more in keeping with what has now become a residential area.

“The site serves no useful purpose for the Green Belt and never has due to the existing planning permission dating back many decades.”

But objectors put forward 20 reasons for permission not to be granted saying the development would increase the amount of traffic on what they say is a busy road and say that the site was useful in separating the districts of Lightcliffe and Hove Edge “and its preservation is of vital importance to the future of both communities.

In addition they say “the eyesore has been created by the applicant to influence people into accepting housing development and that an inquiry has examined this area in detail and the inspector’s conclusion was that it should remain in Green Belt.”

In a report for tomorrow’s meeting at Halifax town hall, head of planning Geoff Willerton said developments in the Green Belt could only be recommended where “very special circumstances” exist.

Having carefully considered the applicant’s claims for such status – the designation of Hipperholme as a ‘growth point’ and the requirement for extra housing development as part of the regeneration of the area and its brown field status – he said he could not justify granting permission.

It would, he concluded, be an “inappropriate development” and a “major departure from Green Belt policies”.

But planning consultant Steven Hartley, agent for the applicant, said: “We feel that it is a brown field site where there is no restriction on the storage of stone.

“Technically, he (Steve Rand) could pile it as high as he likes.”

The consultant also added: “There is a very large amount of support for development from local people for the use of the site for housing and I just hope that members of the planning committee will give some regard to what the locals who actually live there require.”

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