Liberal Democrats have submitted their plans for the Local Development Framework. This is a strategic plan to determine the amount of land needed over the next 17 years for new homes and new businesses.
Housing: The Lib Dems plan 2 distinct phases for housing. The first phase is for 15,436 houses. The vast majority of these houses are on sites that already have planning permission but which have yet to be developed because of the recession. The second phase of 7,000 homes would NOT be included in the plan unless the housing in phase 1 was in the process of being developed.

This achieves the Liberal Democrat aim of “forcing” housing developers onto brownfield sites first. At the same time it safeguards Greenfield sites as these would only be developed once the land supply of brownfield land has dried up.

This approach also ensures that there will be enough homes in the area but that these will only built in line with known demand.

Land for business: There are currently £2.6 million people who are unemployed. In Kirklees the unemployment rate is 5% and nearly 30% of young people are without a job. These figures demand a positive response from the Council. That is why we are determined to create the necessary environment in which businesses are attracted into Kirklees to create new jobs that are high skill and high value.

Liberal Democrats want to give Dewsbury and Batley the chance to regenerate from within with a once in a lifetime injection of £400,000,000 of private sector investment. This will provide new homes and new jobs in Dewsbury and the regeneration of the Bradford Road corridor. An investment of this scale will bring much needed new businesses to the town centres and the potential for major additional investment in roads and other services.

For Huddersfield, the creation of a Business Park at Cooper Bridge will bring a significant number of new jobs for Huddersfield. Liberal Democrats want the Council to work with the University to encourage “spin-off” businesses from university research.

The Liberal Democrat Group have rejected the proposal for development (Greenbelt and POL) in the Grimescar Valley on the grounds that it is of particular environmental value to many residents in Huddersfield and because that part of the town has already had significant numbers of new homes with several hundred more in the pipeline.

We have listened very carefully to representations from local people. We have balanced the known need for more houses – there are 17,000 families on the Housing Register for instance – with a determination to safeguard as much of our green land as possible.

We have also borne in mind the fact that it is a Government appointed Planning Inspector who will have the final say on the Council’s plan. The Inspector has the power to instruct the Council to increase the amount of land for housing and business if he considers the council plan to be inadequate. We want elected councillors to be in control of the plan for Kirklees not an unelected and unaccountable inspector who doesn’t live here. That is why having a credible plan that is in the words of the Government guidance “sound” is vital.