CONTROVERSIAL proposals to build four new family homes in a village farmyard have been approved despite concerns about overdevelopment. Blackburn with Darwen Council Planning Committee granted permission for the scheme in Chapeltown on the West Pennine Moors on Thursday night. The land already had approval for two large homes and the latest application by Mark McBriar had been withdrawn from last month s meeting for further work with council officials. The go-ahead was given despite 17 objections from nearby residents, North Turton Parish Council, and local councillor Colin Rigby. The West Pennine ward Tory said: There are too many properties for the size of the land. This is overdevelopment.”
THE transformation of a skatepark into an Olympic-level sports village is set for take off. Proposals for its extension with top-class training facilities for skateboarders and BMX riders are set for approval by councillors. They include a street skate plaza, dirt jump and pump track, and a BMX course. The new ‘Street Skatepark’ would developed round the car park at Darwen’s Junction 4 Skatepark. Blackburn with Darwen Council s Planning Committee is recommended to approve the urban sports village on Thursday night despite two objections from nearby residents It is one of three early projects which secured a share of a £750,000 government grant from the Darwen Town Deal.
BLACKBURN with Darwen Council is set to buy the former Thwaites Brewery site for redevelopment. It has teamed up with Maple Grove Developments Ltd, part of the Eric Wright Group, to pay for the purchase and regeneration of the seven acres of cleared land. The site on Penny Street in Blackburn town centre has been empty since 2018 and will cost several million pounds to buy. The new partnership will look at a range of redevelopment options from commercial development through to leisure uses or new houses and flats. The site’s future use has long been a concern to the council which in 2012 was involved in a tug-of-war with Thwaites over the company’s plans to sell it to Sainsbury’s for a superstore, which were later abandoned.
A COUNCIL should suspend approving new homes schemes, Conservatives have said. Tory growth spokesman Cllr Paul Marrow and his predecessor Cllr Derek Hardman called for the moratorium at Blackburn with Darwen Borough s Council Forum on Thursday night. They were concerned about over-development of green fields. They also raised the revocation of a permission for 165 new homes on Whalley Old Road in Sunny Bower just hours after it was given. Town hall bosses quashed the decision the day after it was approved by the planning committee on January 21 after officials concluded the meeting failed to have received a mineral resources assessment to consider.