Calderdale Local Plan: First stage of plans for 400 new homes and care village in Halifax get green light

Stone Knight Partnership’s scheme for land south west of White Birk Farm at Howcans Lane, Boothtown – which which borders Ovenden, includes up to 405 homes and a care village.

The latter will contain assisted care housing, a care home and medical centre, as well as a community hub, Calderdale Council’s planning committee heard.

At this stage, only outline permission was sought to approve the access to the site – and this was granted by the committee.

The principle of housing on the site has been established by the council’s Local Plan, which was approved two years ago.

The main access will be from Shay Lane, while an emergency access from Old Lane was also approved.

The scheme will also include a footbridge from the site to Ovenden Road.

Other matters, including road layout within the site itself, layout, appearance, scale and landscaping, would be the subject of a later, detailed, reserved matters application.

There are objectors who are concerned new homes would see increased traffic reaching the site using roads already heavily used, with limited safe crossing places.

Infrastructure, land stability, disturbance during the build, biodiversity and flooding issues are among their other concerns.

Objector Mr Walker told the committee he had submitted a 2,500 schedule of objections to the application.

Another objector, Trish Boyd, was concerned about the stability of the site – an issue also raised by Coun Jonathan Timbers (Lab, Calder).

For the applicant, agent Adrian Rose said all due diligence had been done on this for what was a major site, as would be expected.

Although approving the outline application, councillors had concerns that some of the issues relating to improving public transport and pedestrian and cycling links should be honed at this earlier stage.

But highways officers said, given this was an outline application, those issues were best dealt with further down the line.

The outline permission was granted subject to a number of conditions and legal agreements – the latter will see £67,000 brought in for footpath improvements, £175,000 to fund surveys, design and legal work towards improving the Old Lane route into Halifax, £70,000 to upgrade bus stops and funding of £512 per new home for travel planning.