CROMWELL WOOD ESTATE COMPANY LIMITED T/A Cromwell Mining Consultants
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CROMWELL WOOD ESTATE COMPANY LIMITED Butterfield House T/A Cromwell Mining Consultants 59 Oakenshaw Lane Mining Engineers and Development Consultants Walton Wakefield Tel/Fax: 01924 255666 WF2 6NJ Mobile: 07739256461 E-mail: [email protected] Our Ref: JC/ZEC/St Giles Road – Crows Nest 26th September 2018 Calderdale Council Town Hall Halifax HX1 Dear Planning Team St Giles Road – Crows Nest Park Housing Allocation in Lighcliffe. I am writing on behalf of my client, Messrs Gibson who own the land to the north of Crows Nest Quarry and was submitted a parcel LP1072 for land to the south of St Giles Road. The land is currently rough undulating land that was a former sandstone quarry, a field to the west which is currently used to train dogs and abuts the boundary of the stone dressing yard on St Giles Road and the football pitch to the south of the access road to Crows Nest Quarry. The land has been taken out of the land allocated for housing due to issues with traffic generation and the bottleneck at Hipperholme Crossroads on the A644. Two other sites have been left in the allocation which would impinge on the cross roads when they are built on and completed. Housing development has been completed on Harley Head Avenue off Spout House Lane / St Giles Road between 2013 and 2016 that was considered not to add more traffic than provided for in the Government’s own assessment of traffic growth. Further planning permissions have been granted for housing in the area. The land to the south west that is now a stone dressing yard and has reference number LP1075, and being used for a lorry park and a garage area that is currently being remediated was granted planning permission for 30 houses under decision number 11/00644/OUT and has detailed planning for 10 houses under planning permission 14/01479, outline planning permission under 15/01582/OUT and 16/00204/OUT. There is also a certificate of lawful use for residential use for an existing bungalow with planning reference 18/00067/191. The above approved development is not shown on the Local Plan Publication 2018 Map in the land shown as the Stoneworks nor is the new Harley Head Avenue housing estate to the east of Hipperholme Concrete Works now Deco-Pak which is misleading on the map as it should show development already permitted and in some cases built out. The owners of the land at Gaubert and Park Quarries Messr’s Gibson have considered the LDF and associated maps and believe that the plan should be updated to reflect the recent changes to housing policies in England with the publication of the revised NPPF on the 24th July 2018 and the updated housing requirements revised in September 2018. They believe the site LP1072 should be re- examined and included in the housing allocation land for Calderdale based on a number of facts that are discussed below. The site LP1072 is a former sandstone quarry that was known as Giles and Gaubert Quarries and worked from 1875 until 1907 when the OS map show the quarries being filled with overburden and waste. A lot of the waste is from the Silex Works of Brookes Limited as their works were located at what is now DecoPak but was Hipperhome concrete works. The site was continued to be tipped into from Silex Works and Crows Nest park quarries until 1956. The land is undulating due to the tipping and was never reclaimed and restored. The site is likely to be slightly contaminated with quarry waste and material from Silex such as coal ash. The site has revegetated in parts and could be levelled to provide a housing site if material is available such as inert construction and excavation waste and mineral waste from two nearby quarries. The woodland could be left on the eastern boundary, refer to the aerial photograph below and the site developed within the red line shown. The land is within the Mineral Safeguarding Area for Elland Flag sandstone but within there are no stone reserve remaining as the land has been worked by surface means to extract the sandstone for the Silex works and Brookes Limited. The site has been compared with three other sites in the area which are designated as housing sites and offer the same difficulties in terms of ground conditions. This site has been tipped in with mainly quarry or stone works waste and can be developed in the same manner as the following sites; LP 0945 Pond Quarry Lightcliffe Road. This site is a quarry with remnant reserves of sandstone in the north east corner of the site. The quarry void is deep with vertical faces and will require filling with good inert compacted engineering fill to the surface. Access to the bottom of the quarry is difficult in regard to the access road gradient until the levels of fill are brought up to 50 percent of the fill. This site could take many years to bring on stream due to the volume of material required to fill the quarry and the removal of the existing Elland Flag in the north east corner. LP1075 St Giles Road. This site was part of Yew Tree Quarry and Rough Heys Quarry which have been filled in with quarry overburden, ash and fly ash from the local power station. Yew Tree Quarry on the west side of Spout House Lane / St Giles Road has been developed for housing and is now Harley Head Avenue and Sunderland Way. The site to the east of Spout House Lane has been granted planning permission for 30 houses with access off St Giles Road. The site has differing ground conditions which the developer will deal with through piling the foundations and grouting the underground sandstone workings. This was the case for the Harley Head Avenue where Yew Tree Quarry was located. LP 1053 Squire Hill Quarry is still operational with a small volume of building stone and reserves of aggregate that could be used in the development. To bring the site to a development platform upto 180,000 cubic metres of engineered fill is required that will take 5 to 7 years to procure when considered with the Pond Quarry Lightcliffe site. LP1077 Southedge Quarry Brighouse Road is a former commercial land fill site that has been restored for over 25 years and is now green field. The site lends itself to development for housing and other mixed uses but the landfill use constrains the site in relation to housing as the ground conditions will have to be investigated and possibly the housing built on the parts where the land fill was backfilled quarry waste and inert excavation waste which restricts the numbers. The sites are discussed in policy SD7 and it is noted that the constraints will need to be dealt with in any detailed planning application. These three sites could be years before they come to the point where houses can be built as there is engineering work to carry out on all three. It is estimated that these sites will be available in 10 year time from the publication of the LDF. LP1072 on St Giles Road outlined with a red line as shown on the aerial photograph above could be made ready within 2 years of being allocated in the LDF and a detailed planning application submitted. The ground conditions are back filled quarry waste that has been stable for over 50 years and with some levelling off and material from surrounding quarries to level the site up, leaving the woodland to the east and south could be phased in over a period of 5 years whilst the other quarry sites that have been allocated are brought to development. This site is the only remaining piece of land within Hove Edge that could be developed within the next 5 years. The attributes for the allocated housing sites can be considered to apply to this site. The site would comply with policy SD2 on sustainability as it would be using former brownfield land that has been partially restored but not remediated to provide housing land within the village of Hove Edge and Lightcliffe. The site has good communications with public transport, the road network. It is likely that people who live in Hove Edge and Lighcliffe will work in Brighouse, Huddersfield, Leeds or Bradford and the road network is acceptable for these destinations. It is acknowledged that Hipperholme Crossroads present a bottleneck to traffic travelling to Halifax but there are other routes from the area. Two railway stations provide travel to places further afield located Brighouse and Halifax. The site is currently allocated within the green belt but the Stoneworks Land has been granted planning permission as it is a brownfield site within the Green Belt and was a former employment site. The green belt between Hove Edge and Lightcliffe is mainly taken up by Crows Nest Park golf club. The proposal does not impinge upon the open space of the golf club or the allocated mineral site and will form a ribbon development alongside St Giles Road, Ivy Crescent and Ivy Terrace. The owner has considered the policies on housing within the draft LDF and HS1 and could be brought forward as a non allocated housing site if it was not allocated in the Green Belt to the rear of residential development. In a recent review of Crows Nest Quarry under Schedule 14 of the Environment Act 1995 there was considerable opposition from the local population to a quarry reopening for building stone and generally the residents do not want any further quarrying in the area and complain about the three quarries and stone works in Hove Edge.