It was confirmed at the Leeds city council full council meeting in January that the controversial Haigh Side site is now to be a ‘broad location’ in the council’s updated plan. This means that it will be given protection as green belt land for the next 16 years.
The site allocation HG2-173 near Wood Lane is behind the St George’s and Haigh Side estates and this means that the long campaign by Labour councillors and residents has been a success.
We mounted a campaign with residents when it emerged that this large site of more than 500 houses behind the St George’s estate (former hospital) and the Haigh Side estate had been earmarked to provide building land. The site is green belt land and Labour councillors and residents argued that it should remain in the green belt, and that there would be huge access issues affecting the residential estates of St George’s and Haigh Side Way. The area has seen recent double parking problems which we are working to resolve and there is a large volume of traffic already coming from the Wood Lane direction into Leeds. We urged local people to write in their objections to this land being included as a site allocation and worked with the Rothwell Neighbourhood Forum who submitted their own objection.
This is great news, we made our opinion very clear to council bosses that we do not want this as a development site and had meetings with the Executive Board member and the Chief Planning Officer. The arguments we and residents put forward were valid and I’m pleased that we’ve been listened to and that residents have been heard. We argued that brownfield should always be built on first and that the infrastructure in this area of Rothwell just couldn’t cope with a development of this scale, including schools and doctors’ surgeries. We were assured during the consultation that well thought through changes could be made to the site allocations proposals and we took them at their word and pushed for it to be removed. Thanks to all those residents who put in comments and objections.
I never signed the petition as I would have if asked. Thank you
Excellent news! Congratulations and many thanks to everyone involved in the campaign.
A huge relief!
Hi Karen, l would like to thankyou for keeping me informed with the green band in Rothwell, l live at Haighside and I was concerned with the 500+ new homes that could of been built. I’m overwhelmed… Thankyou once again for the hard work and looking after the Rothwell Residents. Thank you.
Mr S J Jenkinson.