Red alert: 150 homes planned for fields between Brown Bank Lane and the new school at Hawber Cote

Persimmon, one of the UK's biggest builders, wants to put 150 homes on the scenically outstanding fields between Brown Bank Lane and Silsden's new school at Hawber Cote. The above photograph shows the proposed development area bounded in red. Brown Bank Lane forms the northernmost boundary while the grounds of the new school (still under construction when this drone photograph was taken) abut the southern end. The picture was supplied by Silsden Campaign for the Countryside, which is spearheading opposition to the Persimmon plans.

Persimmon is leafletting every household to draw attention to a 'digital engagement platform', which is a website (www.boltonroadsilsden.co.uk) giving development details and inviting the public's feedback. The above photograph, taken from the Tar Topping fields on the opposite side of town, shows the Bolton Road allotments at the edge of the built-up area. Two fields to the left of the allotments and farmland to the right, adjoining the houses in Banklands Avenue and Hawber Cote Drive, all the way to the new school, will be built on if Persimmon's plans are approved. 

The landscape from Bolton Road to Nab End, rich in footpaths, trees, hedges, dry-stone walls and fields, has been regarded by generations of Silsdeners as a precious and unique feature of local life. Persimmon says it will seek 'as far as possible' to protect and incorporate into the site lay-out these treasured features. The field pictured above and below, next door to the new school, would form the southern boundary of the Persimmon estate.

The field, with its well-used footpath from Hawber Cote Drive to Swartha, adjoins the original Hawber Cote (pictured below), which gives the area its name.

Another popular path from Hawber Cote Drive diagonally crosses the above field, which, again tree-lined, is scheduled for development. After discussions with Bradford council, Persimmon says it proposes to extend Hawber Cote Drive for a short distance into the housing site to provide a turning area for refuse and delivery vehicles.

Hawthorn and buttercups adorn the fields Persimmon wishes to develop. Its scheme is for about 150 homes, which will include 2, 3, 4 and 5-bedroomed properties. Around 30 of them will be affordable homes. Persimmon says the development will provide much-needed new housing and improve housing choice and availability in Silsden. The town council could receive 25% of the estimated £250,000 Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) on Persimmon.

This buttercup meadow to the left of the Bolton Road allotments and the adjoining field by Brown Bank Lane are the only part of the Persimmon proposals designated for housing in Bradford council's draft local plan. The council has earmarked the two fields for 40 homes. Altogether the local plan designates eight sites for 580 new homes in Silsden (see my blog of February 24th, 2021). Access to the proposed Persimmon estate will be from Bolton Road via a new junction. Persimmon says the site lay-out has been designed to enable the new estate to link to an eastern by-pass should one be built in the future.

Silsden's new primary school next door to Hawber Cote was scheduled for completion in summer 2021 but is not yet in use. It will cater for 640 pupils. There are fears it will not be big enough to meet the demands of all the new housing already under way and much more to come.

Silsden's Campaign for the Countryside, which started in 2018 when the Hawber Cote fields were previously threatened, will be leafletting residents calling for them to support a potentially long battle against Persimmon's 'unsustainable development.' The campaign urges the public to respond to the Persimmon consultation and to express their concerns to the ward councillors and the MP. It says Silsden is already witnessing a massive house-building programme to the north and south of the town but the Persimmon development would 'destroy forever one of our most wondrous assets: the gently rising setting and sweeping views which wrap around Silsden to the east.' The campaign's new website (www.silsdencountryside.org) includes a film about the Brown Bank/Swartha/Hawber Cote fields and the role they have always played in the community. Campaigners are pictured above at a gathering in January 2019.