The head of a multi-million pound company is battling planners yet again over access to his Burley Woodhead home.

Ken Brook-Chrispin has been forced to apply for retrospective planning permission after installing 12 lamps along a private driveway.

The chairman and chief executive of Seabrook Crisps hit the headlines in 2007 after building a new road to his house on Green Lane.

Neighbours were angered to see diggers ploughing up a field for the unauthorised track and launched a campaign to return the green belt land to its former state.

Bradford Council then ordered him to remove 75 square metres of decking from the front of his property.

Mr Brook-Chrispin said cars had been run off his driveway by thieves and that he had been advised to install lighting by the police.

“I have two daughters at university and my wife spends a lot of time on her own when I’m abroad,” he said.

“It’s a 300m drive and I don’t like the idea of them going along there.” He said he had examined planning guidelines on lighting and had believed there was no requirement for permission for the lamp posts.

He has now removed the fuse for the lights as they had been mistakenly wired to stay on through the night, he said.

The 2.6m-high traditional lamp posts with six-sided lanterns will eventually be linked to an electronic gate and sensor system and will only remain lit while a vehicle is moving along the drive.

But Green Lane resident Christine Thornthwaite said she was concerned that there was too much illumination and that it made the lane look like an airport runway from afar.

“When the lights are on they are like a beacon, highlighting that there is a community up here and attracting non local people to the area,” she said.

National newspapers took up the story of the ‘Green Lane bypass’, built in the run up to Mr Brook-Chrispin’s daughter’s 18th birthday party at the house.

The businessman said he believed people regretted objecting to the new road as the existing single track was so bad.

“Some people who complained now wish they hadn’t,” he said.