Go-ahead for £62.5m poison land scheme

The council planning committee voted by five to one – with Liberal Democrat Ruth Goldthorpe still resisting – in favour of the broad outlines of the plans put forward by their officers and development company Genr8 for new housing, warehouses, shops, offices and leisure facilities, in the Copley Valley, along the River Calder between Halifax and Sowerby Bridge.

Yorkshire Forward promised £5m of taxpayers’ money towards the scheme because it is supposed to create nearly 600 local jobs.

But the objectors say a 40-room hotel which would have accounted for some of the jobs has been dropped, that the development will increase traffic and will require £1m of taxpayers’ money for new school places.

However, the council says it will also involve at least one new road, flood defences, a landscaped nature reserve, a bridge over the canal and decontamination of the largely derelict land which was previously home to a sewage works and other industrial operations. The value of “infrastructure investment” is estimated at £10m, according to planning committee chairman Daniel Sutherland.

He said after last night’s meeting: “It was not an easy decision but we felt that the benefits to local people outweighed the disadvantages highlighted by the objectors.”

An official council report in 2005 said that much of the land in the Copley Valley was poisonous and recently allotment holders were warned over produce grown on the land.

Mr Nick Coughlan, of the Copley Environmental Protection Group, said last night: “I do not know exactly what next but we now need to look into whether we can appeal or get it called in by the Secretary of State or take it further in some other way.

“We are not against any development but this is the wrong scheme.”