A PLAN for nearly 30,000 new homes around Huddersfield could go back to the drawing board.
Kirklees Council consulted residents earlier this year over its Local Development Framework (LDF), which could lead to 28,000 extra houses by 2028.
But a special investigation has been launched into the two-month consultation – labelled a “sham” by one leading councillor.
And it revealed failings – including an admission that thousands of homes never got leaflets about the plans.
Kirklees officers compiled a detailed blueprint to cope with population growth in the next 15 years.
The LDF proposes increasing housing numbers by more than a fifth in Kirkburton, Holmfirth, Linthwaite, Scissett and Clayton West, Denby Dale, Skelmanthorpe and Dewsbury.
Kirklees consulted residents on the blueprint from December until February.
But opponents of the LDF claim the process was flawed, with thousands of residents not receiving an information leaflet through their door.
The council’s Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee will examine the consultation process next week.
Officers have drawn up a report for the committee explaining what happened during the two-month consultation.
Four hundred people attended seven public meetings about the LDF across the district.
The report admits that a stormy meeting in Meltham on February 3 had been “the most challenging” and had gone from an information session to a public meeting at the insistence of some councillors.
Officers suggest that future consultations should have “less reliance on ‘traditional’ potentially unstructured meetings.”
The report adds that Kirklees decided to pay Mailbox Nationwide £12,000 to deliver LDF information leaflets to every home in the district, rather than posting them at a cost of £43,000.
But the report says: “Mailbox Nationwide has subsequently confirmed that 172,975 leaflets were delivered. Regrettably over 14,000 homes would not have received a leaflet.”
Robert Bamforth, a spokesman for anti-LDF group Kirklees Community Action Network, disputed the figures yesterday.
He said: “In excess of 90% of people have not received the leaflet.
