People are being urged to scrutinise new maps of their area which suggest where housing could be built in future.

Bradford Council has found hundreds of new sites which it believes could be suitable to build homes on in the coming years.

It has now published its findings and will decide which sites to earmark for housing later this year.

In 2011, planners found more than 700 sites across the district which could theoretically be suitable for housing, enough for around 44,000 homes.

These were revealed in a document called the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA).

But the Council didn’t feel this gave them enough choice about which sites to develop in its Local Plan and which to leave untouched, so a further trawl has now been conducted, this time including sites as small as a fifth of a hectare.

This move, as well as members of the public and developers coming forward to suggest sites, has led to a further 270 sites being found, the equivalent of 9,657 homes.

The new report doesn’t look at changing the number of homes to be built, only the number of potential sites to choose from.

And planners say there is still a “significant shortage” of deliverable housing land across the district.

Now one councillor has urged the public to look at the new maps to see what it means for their neighbourhood, and make their voices heard.

Councillor Anne Hawkesworth (Ind, Ilkley), said: “People should not just sit back and think, ‘Nothing’s going to happen’. They should be proactive.”

She said she was concerned to see more green belt land in her ward had been listed.

An updated SHLAA has now been published, which reveals that of the district’s land where housing could theoretically be built:

  • A third is on the green belt.
  • New suitable brownfield sites have been found, which would accommodate more than 3,000 homes.
  • But new suitable greenfield sites have also been found, enough for 6,700 homes.
  • The proportion of suitable sites which are brownfield has remained exactly the same – at 27 per cent.

Councillor Val Slater, Bradford Council’s executive member responsible for planning, said the Telegraph & Argus ‘Save Our Green Spaces’ campaign had helped the Council to find more suitable brownfield sites.

She said: “No decisions on any pieces of land listed in the SHLAA have yet been taken and any future development proposals for them would be subject to widespread consultation as part of the development of the Local Plan and statutory planning processes.

“This SHLAA update continues to prioritise brownfield land as the priority for development over greenfield land and includes many of the sites identified by Telegraph & Argus readers as part of the ‘Save Our Green Spaces’ campaign.”

To view the document, visit bradford.gov.uk/bmdc/the_environment/planning_service/local_development_framework/evidence_base_strategic_housing_land_availability_assessment