A campaign group has conceded defeat in its long-running battle to stop a £25m business park being built in the Aire Valley after Bradford Council announced that work would start on Monday.

Diggers will move onto the Buck Lane site next week to start work on the bitterly-fought hi-tech development of 15 acres of green land in Baildon.

Action group Baildon Residents Against Inappropriate Development (BRAiD) objected to the plans for two years, but now say the fight has gone as far as it can in terms of stopping the work.

Secretary Ed Butterworth said: “We fought the fight, but at the beginning we estimated our chance of success was slightly less than five per cent.

We’ve yet to see a coherent argument in favour of it.”

Bradford Council, which gave the project the green light, said the land has been intended for development since the late 1980s.

The campaign group is now urging any firms considering being based there to independently check predicted traffic figures. It claims that 700 staff at the site will cause longer tailbacks than the Council predicts.

Mr Butterworth said: “We have accepted that we have run out of options and that Buck Lane will go ahead. However, for everybody’s sake we need it to be a success. Losing green space to a thriving industrial estate is one thing, losing it to a partially occupied building site is another.”

The Council hand-delivered letters telling people when the work – which includes road works and earth works – would start last week.

Baildon councillor Roger L’Amie said he had two main concerns about the development. He said: “Should there be development of a green field site, when there’s brownfield sites that could be developed? And has proper consideration been given to the extra traffic this would generate on an already congested road?”

A spokesman for the Council said: “Traffic movements were considered as part of the planning approval “ The Council has provided numerous opportunities which BRAiD have taken to voice their objections to this scheme.”