A PUBLIC inquiry into a decision to refuse at 70 home development at Pool-in-Wharfedale will be held this Spring.

Leeds City Council rejected Taylor Wimpey’s outline plan for land behind Church Close, which included access from the A659 Pool Road, last June.

The developer appealed, however, and the matter will be settled at an inquiry which will start on Tuesday, May 15 and is expected to last six days.

The council gave a number of reasons for rejecting the scheme, which Councillor Barry Anderson (Con, Adel & Wharfedale) described as “unwanted and inappropriate development in land that needs to be looked at as a whole.”

Those included concerns about the plot's Protected Area of Land status within the Leeds Site Allocations Plan - the development blueprint for the next decade.

Concerns were also raised about road safety and a lack of 'necessary contributions' in areas including affordable housing, public transport and green space.

Leeds has now just published a copy of its Statement of Case, which sets out the arguments it will present at the inquiry.

Its conclusion sates: “It is considered that only the comprehensive and holistic development of the wider safeguarded site, if at all, could possibly deliver adequate highways and educational infrastructure required to serve the future needs of the wider site.

“Furthermore, only a comprehensive and holistic development of the wider site could possibly lead to potentially sustainable drainage infrastructure solutions.

“The appeal proposal would also fail, in the absence of a signed section 106 agreement, to provide necessary contributions for the provision of affordable housing, education, greenspace, on and off-site highway infrastructure, drainage, infrastructure, public transport, travel planning measures, air quality measures and cycle and pedestrian connections.”

A 'Statement of Common Ground' published on behalf of Taylor Wimpey UK Limited, on the other hand, stresses the benefits it believes the development would bring.

They include:

*Providing housing to help address a five year supply shortfall

*Delivering 35 per cent - about 25 homes - affordable housing on the site

*The creation of new public green spaces and the control of flood water run-off, though the creation of a 'surface water attenuation basin'.