OUTLINE plans to build East Lancashire's first £6million "green" business park have finally been submitted.

Environmental charity Prospects is behind the proposals which could see the construction of an industrial plant including four eco houses, a bio-mass heating plant, a timber yard and four 45ft-high wind turbines.

Half of site would be kept as open space.

The development will be run as a not-for-private-profit social enterprise, the income from tenancies being used to support the core costs of the charity's work.

Coach Road Meadow, an 11-acre site on the edge of Oswaldtwistle and Church, has already been bought by the group to house the business park.

Woodland currently on the disused site would be retained and the group also plan to use ‘permeable’ materials for the car park and hard landscaping, so rain will be absorbed through it and collected into a nearby watercourse.

The site, which is currently earmarked as suitable for certain types of open-space development, would be transformed into a environmentally-friendly site aimed at attracting small and medium-sized businesses, which wil be housed in a collection of small 3,000 sq ft units.

Both the homes and businesses, which would have seperate accesses, would use collected rainwater and renewable energy created on site.

Phil Barwood, the chairman of Prospects, said the site would generate its own electricity, using the turbines and the heating plant, which would be run on waste wood chippings.

The site would also house a treatment plant to deal with all sewage created, which would then be released into reed bed habitats.

The site would include a new office for the Prospects team, where they would relocate to from their Accrington base on Cannon Street.

Mr Barwood said: "It’s a very open kind of design, partly to improve the appearance, partly for planning reasons and also to improve the drainage on site.

"As well as regenerating the area and providing employment, we also want to run it as a business to produce income for our own projects so that in future, we are not always asking for grants elsewhere.”

The eco-houses would be built using state-of-the-art environmental design, such as using sunlight to maximise heating as Prospects wants the site to be self-sufficient in energy usage.

An application for outline planning permission will be considered by Hyndburn Borough Council in the new year.