450 homes could be built on Pleasington Lakes in Blackburn

An application has been submitted to Blackburn with Darwen Council proposing to build up to 450 new homes on the Pleasington Lakes site off Broken Stone Road.

Black Pearl Homes bought the land in November last year.

According to the proposals, 38 homes would be built in phase one of the development, 224 in phase two and 188 in phase three.

The site lies to the south of Gib Lane where up to 700 homes could be built as part of the Gib Lane masterplan.

And the Heys Lane site to the east of Broken Stone Road is earmarked for the development of another 650 homes.

To the west is the former Sappi Paper Mill site, where there is outline permission for a maximum of 500 homes to be built.

Conservative group regeneration spokesman and Livesey with Pleasington ward member Cllr Derek Hardman said the site should not be used for housing.

He added: “I’m not happy about it at all.

“They have not finished the remediation work they were going to do.

“According to officers they will only remediate the land fully if they get permission for the houses.

“We have got acres and acres of land on the other side where developers are not building because the houses aren’t selling," said Cllr Hardman.

“This site was not allocated for housing in the local plan but the council has fallen behind on the number of houses being built.

“Developers are only going to build where they can sell.

“There’s still enough land for probably 1,000 houses on the other side.

“The council is still looking at releasing more sites but there just aren’t the customers and I think they have got it all wrong.”

Executive member for regeneration Cllr Phil Riley said: “We have had a very long-standing issue with the land, which was contaminated probably the best part of 20 years ago.

“The only way we were ever going to get that issue dealt with was by a developer putting value back into the land by building houses.

“I’m delighted because there has been a great deal of remediation work going on and that will continue but it would not have been done without the prospect of houses being built.”

A planning statement submitted as part of the application reads: “The Broken Stone Road project lies within the context of a rapidly changing area that will see the expansion of Blackburn to the south west towards the M65 motorway corridor.

“The collective development of Sappi, Gib Lane and Heys Lane will effectively see the expansion of the Feniscowles and Higher Broadhalgh neighbourhoods to the south and will result in the expansion of the area by over 2000 new homes and other facilities.”