Plans for a THIRD major new housing development in Mirfield are set to be unveiled.

There are already controversial plans for two separate greenfield projects.

Now developers are about to unveil a third – bringing the total number of new homes proposed for the town to 337.

Bellway Homes want to build 136 homes on the Balderstone Hall fields off Hepworth Lane while Ben Bailey Homes has plans for 37 more off Lady Heton Drive.

Now another big firm, Taylor Wimpey, has come up with the biggest development of the lot.

The company has joined forces with Park Crescent Ltd, owner of the so-called Mirfield25 site in Leeds Road, Mirfield Moor.

Park Crescent has planning permission for industry – the site was previously mooted as a new base for both Batley-based Fox’s Biscuits and Lockwood-based David Brown’s – as well as a retirement village complex.

Industrial use remains on the cards but Park Crescent is to seek planning permission for 164 homes where the retirement village would have been.

All the land is currently green fields.

The developers will officially unveil their plans at a public exhibition on Monday, December 9.

Campaigners have already vowed to fight the other two schemes and an action group, Save Mirfield, which defeated Bellway’s designs on Balderstone fields at a public inquiry 14 years ago, has been re-launched.

Mayor of Mirfield Clr Vivien Lees-Hamilton said she was “incandescent” over the latest plans for Mirfield Moor.

“Mirfield just can’t take any more development. Quite simply we are full!

“Mirfield has always been a dormitory town but that was fine when families had only one car and that car went off to work in the morning and back home in the evening,” she said.

“Now most families have two cars and the volume of traffic has grown massively.

“At times you can’t get in or out of Mirfield at all the main junctions, Cooper Bridge, Sunnybank Road or via Ravensthorpe. There are no words to describe how angry I am.”

Clr Lees-Hamilton said with well over 300 new homes planned, that would be around 400 more children and 700 or so cars.

“If we have 400 more children in Mirfield that's not a new class, it’s a new school.

“The doctor’s is full to overflowing and I really don’t know how we will cope.”

Former Mayor of Mirfield Clr David Pinder said the collapse of Kirklees Council’s Local Development Framework (LDP), a planning blueprint which determines how land can be developed, had left green fields at the mercy of developers.

“Kirklees has even admitted now that if they refuse an application and developers appeal they won’t defend the inquiry so it’s open season,” he said.

“That, combined with the present government’s laxity on planning regulations, means developers can do what they want.”

Another Mirfield town councillor James Taylor wasn’t happy with the timing of the latest consultation.

“These things always seem to happen around Christmas time when people are busy with everything else,” he said.

The consultation on Mirfield Moor will be held at Christ the King Church in Stocksbank Road on December 9 from 2pm-7pm.