ANGRY residents are calling for assurances that plans to build flats for the mentally ill are not "a done deal".

More than 100 people gathered at Christ Church school hall in Walmersley, where objectors voiced fears about the prosposed development off Mill Road.

Householders fear the new tenants may pose a threat to personal safety and want the planning application turned down.

However, resident David Rimmer, of Bevis Green, believes the decision to go ahead may effectively already have been taken and challenges the planning role of the council, the former owners of the land.

Under the plan, disused council garages on the site would make way for the complex of 12 flats for residents with "low-level" mental health needs. Mature trees on the land will be retained and the area landscaped.

Objectors drafted and delivered more than 300 leaflets, urging neighbours to attend the Monday evening meeting.

Meeting chairman Mrs Marilyn Green, of Walmersley Old Road, said later: "We will not back down on this. There are two huge issues. The over-riding concern of most people would be that anything at all is built on this piece of greenery.

"Added to that, there is a major concern about the people who would be living here."

Mrs Green, a nurse, said: "I don't think that this area will offer the client group anything.

"They will be too isolated and I don't think they are going to be supervised enough.

"It will take away our feeling of safety and they will feel excluded. It's not going to help them."

Also present at the meeting were representatives of applicants West Pennine Housing Association and the charity Making Space, which would run the scheme.

The £700,000 scheme will be funded through a Housing Corporation grant, with cash to run the project provided by Government, after a need for suitable accommodation was identified by Bury Council.

A support worker would be employed for six hours every day during the week, with a resident caretaker living in one of the flats.

Making Spaces housing services manager Iris Oldham said that residents would require only low-level support. She said: "There is no danger. They are not criminals. We have almost 500 tenancies that are managed throughout the north west in around 60 flat schemes and do not have any trouble.

"Our clients are very introverted, very vulnerable, but we are trying to enable them to live as independent a life as possible. The letting criteria is very strict."

No date has yet been fixed for the planning control committee to make a decision, but 25 letters of opposition have already been received. Objections include worries about traffic congestion, chemical contamination of the land and the appearance of the building.

Residents say that a housing association consultation exercise was not extensive enough, and that they were not informed about the tenant group in the council's planning notification.

In a letter to the Bury Times, resident Mr Rimmer points out that Bury Lions have been served notice to quit their storage garage on the site and suggests there might be a conflict of interests which would prejudice an impartial hearing of the planning application.

He commented: "I have been informed by the council's estate section that title to the land has already passed from Bury Council to the applicants. Clearly both parties would therefore be embarrassed if planning consent were withheld."

Mr Rimmer adds that people would like to be reassured that consent is not already "a done deal".

Principal planning officer John Hodkinson said: "Details of the people who would live in this development would not necessarily go into a planning notification but it is something the committee will take into consideration." He insisted: "By no means is this a done deal."