From the outside looking in, it may seem to have gone fairly quiet on the Dunford Road Jones Homes front. We can assure you though that there has been plenty going on.

Members of the HEFF committee have made many representations over the past few weeks…
We’ve had a meeting with Kirklees planning department, and made further representations to the Parish Council, who remain very supportive about our argument regarding the scale and type of the development. There have also been many other discussions with local and regional groups and councillors.

You may be aware that while this has been going on, there has been a revised Local Development Plan put forward by Kirklees, in which the land on the planning application is now recommended as a development site. This flies in the face of Kirklees’ own recommendations before and seems, if you’re of a cynical nature, to be very ‘convenient’. This was done in a way that would get minimum opposition, it could have almost been described as underhand on the part of Kirklees planners, and was voted through by council.

Where are we now?

So now we have two things to fight. The application first, and then the Plan designation. We think we have a strong legal case to say that the council/applicant haven’t undertaken the necessary legal surveys they need to with a site that is this close to the Peak District National Park. We aim to fight this in the first instance. We will be then pushing to get the recommended allocation changed in the Local Plan.

We will be needing you to support us in trying to change the allocation when the public consultation period starts in November. We’ll be in touch….

Thanks for reading,
The HEFF committee