Chippings site FAQs

Access to the site will be moved higher up Chapelgate away from the junction and corner. The local Highways authority requires that we use some land to provide a better line of sight and a pavement round the bend which will significantly improve safety for pedestrians and other road users.

It is not possible for EcoHolmes to extend pavements onto surrounding land belonging to different landowners. EcoHolmes would however be happy to see more pavements to link the site to the village, better signage and a village speed limit of 20mph (backed by 86% of local people in our survey). We will do what the Highways authority requires to ensure safe access and traffic flow.

Parking spaces on the site will be more than adequate for residents and their visitors, so there should be no parking over spill onto Chapelgate.

The water does pool on the old tarmac and roadstone wastes that lie on top of the site, from its days with the Highways authority. These would be removed, and Planning will require an acceptable plan to deal with surface water drainage. We have specialist engineering consultants conducting surveys and carrying out drainage design for dealing with surface water.

The tenants who will live here will be from the local area. It will be a planning condition that the homes can only be for affordable housing for local people, and they must remain affordable in perpetuity. They will be for people with some level of housing need (i.e., living in unsuitable conditions for their household). We have evidence in a report from a professional housing supply consultant that a significant number of people in Scholes and nearby villages are in need of affordable housing if they are to live near where they have family connections. There is not a supply of such houses coming through the planning system in this area.

Local connection will need to be evidenced by applicants and this will be a pre-filter to identify potential tenants. For the first letting, the Government, who may supply grant funding to build the homes, will insist we use the Kirklees Council’s housing register, with the local connection filter applied, to identify local applicants. Second lettings will usually have the same requirement for 50%, with the remaining re-lets available either through the choice-based letting system to people on the register, or via Rightmove (but the local connection will still be enforced!).  EcoHolmes and its Housing Association partner will advertise extensively in the area for all lettings.  From experience, the Housing Association know that local people will share news of availability of affordable homes with others in the community before they actually become available.

We expect these homes to be desirable places to live so tenants will want to stay and to look after the houses and open areas. Tenants will be bound by rules of behaviour and will become members of the EcoHolmes Community Land Trust. The housing association who will manage the homes will have staff who are experienced in helping resolve any unneighbourly problems.  There will also be professional maintenance of shared areas of the site through the housing association which will ensure a high standard is maintained.

People will be allocated using the allocation policy outlined in the answer to Q4 above, which will be publicly available. The assessment of who fits that policy will be carried out objectively by housing professionals, not influenced by individuals from EcoHolmes or the Land Charity. The policy and process will be transparent and have rights of appeal.

We are requesting the use of this site on an exceptional basis because of the proven lack of affordable housing in the local community. This rural exception policy is government policy and part of the Council’s Local Plan as a means of providing affordable homes where insufficient building land exists. This policy recognises the rights of communities to have the housing it needs and wants, even within the green belt.  If agreed (and it is a high threshold of proof required), the homes would have to be affordable and allocated to people with a local connection. This will be a planning condition. No commercial developers can make money from only charging affordable prices, so it is very unlikely to create a precedent.

Whilst we agree that developing brown field sites would be the ideal, there are few identified locally and these are either not available or are available at full market value; the economics of which would prevent the provision of low cost, low energy housing. 

EcoHolmes are conscious of the wider environmental issue of global climate change.  Accepting that new affordable houses are needed, we passionately believe they should be better built, and our proposals offer high quality, low-energy homes, in a community environment, with green space and provision for enhancing biodiversity on the site.

We recognise that is used by some dog walkers all year round and children use it to ride bikes and quad bikes. However, the site is not a unique amenity or haven for wildlife.  As part of our site surveys, its ecology and habitat have been evaluated by an independent ecology consultant, who has summarised the site as being of ‘low wildlife interest’.  Also, the underlying soils are heavily contaminated with tarmac, road stone chippings and other wastes.  There is a large Council owned recreation field just above the quarry also providing recreational space.

For managing the ecology and habitat on the site and mitigating the impact of the housing development on local wildlife, we have carried out specialist ecology and arboricultural surveys.  We plan to retain many existing trees and will carry out habitat creation and biodiversity enhancement measures locally on the site. EcoHolmes plan to achieve an overall net gain in biodiversity of 10% for the housing scheme, including off-site measures, which meets local planning policy guidelines for biodiversity. We have also employed specialist landscape designers for our ‘green space’ landscaping scheme for the site. Our planning submission includes details of these surveys, and our landscaping, habitat creation and biodiversity enhancement proposals for the scheme.

We are a local volunteer-run charity which is not here to make money. Rather, volunteers invest a lot of their own time and resources into working on this and other projects. We do it because we believe that local families are forced to move away from the Valley because of high housing costs and that no truly affordable housing is being built. We passionately  believe that to tackle and survive climate change, new homes must be built to the highest standards of sustainable energy efficiency with the bonus of being cheap to heat. This will be an exemplar scheme to highlight that those standards that should be available to us all – affordable low-energy homes that are ‘fit for the future’

EcoHolmes are working in partnership with the Holme Valley Land Charity who own the site – see their support statement below. As the first Community Land Trust in Kirklees, EcoHolmes have been successful in getting special government funding for developing community-led affordable housing in our area.  We have been able to use this funding to employ professional help to develop the Chippings scheme. This team includes an experienced architect (GWP Architecture),  as well as planning consultant, surveyors, highway engineers, ecologists and landscape designers; we have also been supported by LCH community housing advisers from the Leeds hub of the Community Led Housing Trust network; we are working closely with Connect Housing, a West Yorkshire based Housing Association, who, as a Registered Provider, are regulated to manage affordable housing and also have access to government funding for building affordable housing; the Parish Council through the newly approved Neighbourhood Plan, have been supportive to the idea of more smaller, affordable homes in the Holme Valley and along with their Climate Change agenda embraces the goals of EcoHolmes.

We note that whilst Connect Housing Association is our preferred development partner, we have not made any formal commitment pending the outcome of the planning submission and the negotiation of a development agreement with them. Connect Housing is a local West Yorkshire based housing association with experience and expertise in developing and managing both affordable and low-energy housing. They also have experience of working with Community Led Housing Trusts like ours in neighbouring areas.  As a like-minded organisation, EcoHolmes have been developing our relationships with them over the past 18 months.