Hooray! We finally have our very own Community Notice Board! It’s now in place by the community centre near Hill Top School. Many thanks to our local ward Councillors and the Outer South Community Committee for funding and our very own WAAG for organising this! Keep your eye on the board for any local events and information for upcoming issues.

West Ardsley Methodist Church wishes you all a safe and peaceful Christmas. Celebrate with us by putting a decoration or message on our tree.

Father Christmas is making a very special trip around the village to put smiles on all the boys and girls faces! (and the lovely grown ups)

be ready to give him a wave and a HoHoHO when you see him

Tuesday 1st December Santa Claus is coming to town

Ho Ho Ho

Quite a few people have been reporting delays in the post from the Royal Mail. There has been some clusters of Covid-19 outbreaks within the postal service and they have asked that you are patient.

You can contact the post off and collect urgent items you are waiting for from the sorting offices

Stay safe everyone

West Ardsley now has its very own hotline to Father Christmas in the North Pole!

Your little ones can post their Christmas list letters free of charge at the little library on Haighmoor Road

If you include your address Father Christmas (who wont use your details for anything else and he is police checked!) might write back to your Children, adding to the magic of Christmas.

While you post your letters please do have a look at the lovely books in the little library – Leave a book – Take a book

F.O.A. David Feeney | Chief Planning Officer

Planning & Sustainable Development

City Development

Dear Mr Feeney,

We’re obviously aware that the Minister of Housing and Local Government has decided not to call in your clients planning application, and that the planning permission has now itself been issued.

This decision has led to a feeling of massive disappointment and much angst is being expressed by the residents of West Ardsley and Tingley toward LCC and their Planning Department.  Notwithstanding this, the Secretary of States letter, whilst refusing the call-in, alluded to councils and COMMUNITIES making local planning decisions. We believe it is to the benefit of all parties, that the local community have some input into the planning process going forward and, it is within your remit to facilitate this.

You will recall that at City Plans Panel, a number of members had expressed concern at the applicant’s failure to involve the local community in any way during the preparation and consideration of the outline application.  They felt that if there had been such involvement, there might in consequence have been less local opposition.  They asked that it be a requirement that the developers should undertake local consultations as part of the detailed application process.  We are, of course, aware that your officer chose to answer this concern at the time by addressing a completely different issue altogether  –  namely liaison during the

construction process itself.  This avoiding of the issue does not, of course, make the original concern go away.

WAAG therefore would also ask, in a spirit of co-operation, that you should recommend applicants for detailed approvals to undertake active consultation with WAAG, preferably in advance of formal applications being made;  and that you should yourself advise WAAG of, and copy to us, any proposals submitted to the Council for pre-application discussions, with a view to our having an input into that process.  This is, of course, over and above the formal Council notification of every such application to all previous objectors, which we imagine will occur in any event.

Again, we would appreciate your formal confirmation that you will do this.

Thanking you in advance, for and behalf of the local community.

Yours Sincerely

Peter Cowling

Chair , West Ardsley Action Group

Dear all, 

Please read below the following updates from WAAG. A brief summary of the approval notice and also our proposal regarding the environmental impact on the area, from our brilliant WAAG steering committee ecologist. 

As always we welcome your feedback and we are collating your responses for future reference. If we don’t respond, don’t worry you have been heard!  

Approval Notice
The approval notice for 17/08262/OT contains 13 pages of conditions, mostly intended to guard against poor development standards and practices.  Some are for our benefit such as working hours eg “work on site only takes place between 07.15hrs – 18.00hrs Monday to Friday, from 07.30hrs – 13.00hrs on Saturdays with no working on Sundays or Bank Holidays”.  This applies now to any investigation work as well as when construction starts.  So our community can be the eyes and ears to tell the Council if there are working hours breaches or any others.  The full decision notice is listed here: https://publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=P0YHSBJBITW00

In summary the conditions cover:  timetables, groundworks and site preparation and investigation, phasing, housing mix, space and accessibility standards, quantum of green space, CO2 emissions, water and energy consumption, design code, access details, drainage, EV charging points, cycle parking, archaeological recording, dust and mud control, construction plant traffic parking and routes, engaging with ward members and nominated representatives, ecological reports, scheme for areas to remain open (including Haigh Wood), tree protection.

Environmental Impact

This is WAAG’s brief about Haigh Wood and green aspects of the planning application:

There are a number of avenues we could explore to get the most out of this situation to improve the environmental impacts of the development. We would hope we can be involved in discussions about reserved matters and opportunity to influence the final designs through recommendations that are genuinely environmentally sound, but also what the community want to see.

Haigh Wood

Probably the most devastating impact on our greenspace will be the impact on the woods we all love. WADC sought to convince the community that the woodland would be improved by their proposals for management, including additional access and furniture (a green gym for example). If we are involved in further discussion, we can provide guidance and evidence on improving the woodland for habitat rather than sanitised amenity space by, for example:

• increasing the area by planting more trees, for example, providing greater buffer zones of undeveloped land to protect what little greenspace will be left,
• siting the proposed access features and furniture which would be welcomed by many… into the development area where it has lower impact on the habitat but actually greater potential for use by residents,
• installing additional features that are better suited for the character of the space; meadow areas from locally sourced seed rather than imported species that won’t thrive here; ponds and semi-aquatic habitat to reflect the natural existence of pools and springs in the area
• hedges and buffers that are better connected than in the original proposals and provide the wildlife corridors they suggested in original plans but were lacking in evidence
• fencing off sections where dying trees can be left to decay naturally for biodiversity rather than being removed for safety because of increased access (they will be inviting more people into the woods – so will need to manage trees for safety in their current proposals

The development itself

The proposed development in its current form is uninspiring. We can provide advice to the developers on improving the designs to incorporate more green features, and importantly, evidence as to how this can be done, examples of where it has been done before… and also how by incorporating more green features, the development could be more sustainable, more desirable, and more in-keeping with the ambitions of the existing and new community by, for example:

• Planting street trees. The government’s housing white paper is set to require trees on streets in all new developments – through the ‘tree lined streets’ bill. We can help the developer get ahead of the game and show its green credentials by advising them on how to do this through the expertise we already have within the steering committee
• Retaining existing trees where possible to minimise the number of trees removed during this climate emergency
• Propose additional planting and green features through the development to enable wildlife to reach all of our wildlife friendly gardens and bird feeders – through the new housing
• Planting a tree, or a fruit tree for every house to help meet Leeds’ own targets for canopy cover and tree planting in mitigating climate change
• Install other habitat features, bird boxes, bat boxes to rehome the wildlife affected
• Design wild spaces into the proposals where they don’t detract from properties, but enhance the natural space – clumps of trees, shrubs, flowers and borders
• Utilise flood water management to create balancing ponds with naturalised features to enhance the wetland features in the area and encourage insects, birds and amphibians

We have the expertise, examples and evidence to back all this up, within the WAAG steering group and in the broader community. We don’t want the development because it will harm our greenspace, but we have an opportunity – if the council and developers will listen – to get the best deal for nature and the community that we can. We should be welcomed as a valued contributing stakeholder in developing designs.

Kind Regards
WAAG 

UPDATE FROM WAAG                 

With Secretary of State Robert Jenrick’s rejection of a call-in for planning application 17/08262, we must expect Leeds Council to issue the approval notice imminently, though with over a month having passed since that rejection one wonders why that hasn’t happened already.  WAAG is of course furious that the community has been ignored.  Rather than vent its wrath here, however, there are some positive things that can be done, even though they amount to damage limitation.

1. City Plans Panel wanted our community to be given the chance to contribute to plan preparation.  Developers will be starting to prepare their detailed proposals.  We don’t know if there will be one planning application for “reserved matters” on all of the 17/08262 outline area or applications for each of the four land “parcels”.  Almost everything on 17/08262 was illustrative and so not approved.  There is a chance to influence designers.  They won’t be obliged to take account of what the community wants but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.  WAAG will ask to see any proposals put to the Council at pre-application stage and, despite awkward feelings, WAAG proposes to contact the developers and tell them what our community wants.  How will we know this?  WAAG can’t have public meetings these days but can collate positive suggestions on social media or sent to our email address:westardsleyactiongroup@gmail.com.  Suggestions can’t expect to get the developable area reduced or change the access points (expect these to be already approved in 17/08262).  We’re doing a brief focussing on Haigh Wood and green aspects of the development and will post this here in a day or two.

2. There will be pages and pages of conditions, and the Section 106 agreement and the Community Infrastructure Levy, all of which will probably be the much the same as set out prior to the 21 May City Plans Panel meeting.  There will be more on the reserved matters applications too.  It’s LCC’s job to ensure these are complied with – though there won’t be much staff resources put into this unless discrepancies are brought to LCC’s attention by, for example, us.  

3. WAAG will ask the Council for copies of all the key documents and that all objectors to the outline plan be informed of every reserved matters application.

4. WAAG has considered using judicial review to challenge the legality of the 21 May City Plans Panel at which objectors were excluded.  It would be seriously expensive and even if we won it would only require that the decision be freshly taken.  This would not in itself change the planning merits/issues, so we would expect City Plans Panel to vote for approval again.

4. WAAG is keeping an eye on the very radical proposed government changes to the planning system.  It’s very likely that these will much too late to affect the Haigh Wood proposals, though the theme at this initial stage seems to be to enable building to go ahead with fewer safeguards.

5. It may be worth considering whether it would be good for West Ardsley to be included in the Morley Town Council area.  Developers across Leeds currently have to pay the Community Infrastructure Levy on every house approved (though the government’s proposed planning changes could scrap this).  15% of the CIL can be earmarked for local parish or town council areas if they cover where new houses are approved.  If not then all the CIL goes into a general Leeds wide pot and West Ardsley would probably see none of it.  

Thank you for reading.

We have exciting news about the village Christmas Tree this year

The local Labour Councillors have secured some funding for our own Christmas tree which will be placed out side the Hilltop community centre, and will be followed later by a permanent live tree!

Thank you to the councillors

We have also been told the notice board should be in place by the end of the year.