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Middleton Hospital site

LAST week the Government announced that Wharefedale was in one of the areas suggested as a location for one of its new Eco-Towns'.

The Leeds City region, which covers much of the West Yorkshire area has been short-listed along with 14 other locations for one of the first new towns in England for 40 years.

The short-list will be whittled down to ten locations in the next six months and Ministers wants five of the towns built by 2016, with the other half completed by 2020.

The plans have proved controversial in some areas with campaigners saying the idea of environmentally-friendly' new towns is just a positive sounding way to evade planning controls and let developers run riot.

Most of the planned sites are expected to face local opposition, something thought to be worrying the Government.

In the wake of the recent news that the Government expects Leeds and Bradford to create space for 130,000 new homes in the next 20 years, the prospect of a new town the size of Ilkley on the doorstep is enough to terrify locals, no matter how environmentally friendly it is.

Menston district councillor Chris Greaves, who is the planning chairman for the Bradford Council controlled section of the valley, believes Ilkley and Otley residents may have less to fear than residents in the area south of Leeds.

Coun Greaves said: "I have no idea where it is going to go, but I think we may be spared it. It would be counted as part of the regional housing total but I think the only place is Wakefield or Selby way, where it is flat.

"If you think about it - it is building another Ilkley. There is nowhere in this patch where you have awkward little things like hills in the way, so I can't see it being round here," said Coun Greaves.

The new environmentally-friendly towns - low-energy, carbon-neutral developments built from recycled materials - will be the first new towns since the 1960s.

The largest will provide between 15,000 and 20,000 new homes, with officials saying the towns should be "zero-carbon" developments and should be exemplary in one area of sustainability, such as energy production or waste disposal.

They also want 30 to 40 per cent of each eco-town to be allocated as affordable housing.

Coun Greaves (Con) said one of the biggest problems with the concept of an Eco-Town' is that everyone who lived in it would have to have the same attitude towards environmentally-friendly living.

Recently, a developer tried to push through plans to build a small eco-community on the site of the former Middleton Hospital overlooking Ilkley,with space for just a few green living' families, but a whole town operating on the same principles would be an enormous undertaking.

Coun Greaves said: "You would have to have the mind set. Do people want to be told how they are expected to live? I wouldn't."

He added that previous new towns had not been that attractive for people to live in. "Having looked at some of these new towns I would hate to be in one. Dagenham and Milton Keynes would be my idea of hell," said Coun Greaves.

He said that any location for a new town would have to be a large empty site with good access to roads and railway lines for transport. Coun Greaves also accused the Government of delaying the final announcement on the exact locations until after the local elections in May, in case it proves a vote loser.

Coun Greaves said: "It is very interesting that they are not prepared to say where until the elections are out of the way. Wherever they are put there will be howls of outrage. They are using better delaying tactics than Robert Mugabe."

Leeds City Councillor Barry Anderson said he was worried about the way the Government seemed willing to impose new towns on existing settlements.

He said: "Are they going to ride roughshod over local opinion? They are trying to circumvent the normal standard planning process.

"If they are going to be built outside current transport corridors, how are they going to be sustainable without transport?"

Coun Anderson (Adel and Wharfedale - Con) said that if the Government was going to create a new town with 15,000 houses, it also needed to invest funds to create a local infrastructure with new schools, medical centres, shops, transport, leisure centres and recreation areas.

"What is in it for local residents? What benefits are going to accrue to the local residents if Eco Towns are built? If you are going to build in the green belt, is that really sustainable?" said Coun Anderson.

The Eco-Town idea was the first major policy announcement made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as he began his campaign to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister last year. It stemmed from a policy launched by former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott two years earlier.

The new towns will go some way to satisfying the demands of the powerful house-builders lobby, and will provide a laboratory for the sort of environmentally-conscious homes that Ministers want to become the norm.

But there are concerns among environmental campaigners that most of the proposed Eco-Towns will increase car pollution because they will not be big or diverse enough to sustain viable public transport.

A Government inspector who decided not to allow Ilkley's own eco-community at the Middleton Hospital site based his decision on the belief that the site's isolation would result in more car journeys. A similar consideration seems likely to be valid for any new town which is created in Wharfedale or elsewhere.

The Government plans to form a panel of experts who will subject potential developers to tough tests before they win the right to build the towns.

The housing Minister, Caroline Flint, said the new towns would help to tackle climate change, as well as providing affordable new housing.

"We have a housing shortage in this country and that's why we need to build more homes, but we also need to think about sustainable homes in sustainable communities," she says.

8:47pm Wednesday 9th April 2008

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