It seems a controversial plan which would see 4,000 new homes built in Brighouse will now be formally approved by the council ... and go out for public consultation.
It is part of the Local Plan which will go before an extraordinary meeting of the full council later this month but has now been recommended by the council’s Cabinet.
Cabinet member for Planning, Housing and Environment Councillor Dan Sutherland told colleagues at the meeting last night that it is “a bold strategy and well thought through.”
But the Tories on the council claim the plan is “unsound, unfair and not fit for purpose.”
Its leader Clr Scott Benton said: “ The vast majority of the new housing will take place in ‘Eastern Calderdale’: in particular, Brighouse, Northowram, Shelf, Elland and Greetland. For example, over 4,500 of the 9,000 new houses (which the plan lists sites for) will be in the Brighouse, Rastrick and Hipperholme area despite these areas only representing a fraction of the Borough’s total population. The plan places a disproportionate amount of housing growth on a small number of areas which is not only unfair, but also undeliverable.”
The Extraordinary Council meeting will now consider it on Thursday, June 21, at Halifax Town Hall (6pm).
Taking into account housing developments which have already been approved, Calderdale will require enough sites to provide just under 9,500 new homes over the next 15 years.
Some of the fiercest debate has raged over the effect on South East Calderdale, particularly in Brighouse, where two homes schemes dubbed Garden Suburbs, at Thornhills and Woodhouse, could add thousands of people to its population.
Ward councillor for Brighouse, Colin Peel, asked Cabinet if the proposals were what people who lived in Calderdale really wanted and suggested the Garden Suburbs might end up being used by people overspilling from Leeds.
People wanted to live in new homes in areas where they lived now, like Todmorden and Hebden Bridge for example, he said.
Cabinet recommend to the council that the draft Local Plan should be published at 9am on Friday, August 10.
Councillors will also be asked to approve a six week period when it will be possible to make formal representations, or comments, on the plan following its publication.
This period for representations will close at 5pm on Monday, September 24.
The council is following a timetable for publication which was agreed with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which will see the draft Local Plan, including comments from the public, submitted in December 2018.
Calderdale’s Local Plan will then be examined in detail by an independent Planning Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State.
The examination could last around nine months.
Adoption of the plan by Calderdale Council, following receipt of the Inspector’s Report, is expected to be confirmed by the end of 2019.
Councillor Sutherland (Lab, Illingworth and Mixenden) said the plan for homes and industry was an exciting prospect that would allow the borough to maximise its potential, becoming a place where people would want to live, work and visit, with the Garden Suburbs “a fantastic opportunity”.
It balanced the need to provide potential sites for new homes with protecting Calderdale’s green belt.
The draft Local Plan has already been through two formal public consultations, in 2015/16 and again in 2017, which has influenced the proposals as they have developed.
The most recent consultation resulted in more than 8,000 individual comments from local people across the whole borough.
These have all been carefully analysed and considered by the council before the final draft of the Local Plan was prepared, says the council.
