Church Fields revisited

Readers will remember the controversial application for 370 houses proposed for Church Fields in East Ardsley. MARC (Morley against Reckless Construction) has been campaigning against it and we held a very well attended public meeting to raise opposition to it.

The site was due to be visited next Thursday with a debate on the proposal to take place the same afternoon. This has been postponed because the Planning Inspector examining Labour Leeds LDF document is unhappy with the figures they are proposing and questions whether they have a credible policy on a 5 year land supply.

This is where we get into Fantasy Planning area. As readers will remember the previous Labour Government - under their Regional Spatial Strategy - proposed a housing target of 4,300 new homes every year. The amendments proposed by the Planning Inspector is again suggesting a similar figure of 4,800 - more or less the same. We argue that as Labour Leeds City Council has granted planning permission for over 18,000 housing units on mainly brownfield sites and in a good year 3000 new housing units are built - then 18,000 divided by 3,000 would show enough land supply for 8 years.

But in Fantasy Planning world - occupied by all three major parties - they ignore reality and pretend such targets of 4,300 housing units are achievable and even a good thing! Real people know this level of over development means local schools, health centres and roads are overwhelmed with communities picking up the difficulties well after Developers have buggered off leaving us to deal with the mess they have left.

We will campaign robustly to defend this precious Greenfield site but the game of Fantasy Planning played by the Labour Party and others makes our job much harder!