A CAR salesman has won a battle to move on to a key city-centre site that Bradford Council had been saving for a big superstore.

A planning inspector has overturned a Council ruling against the application and agreed that a car sales pitch can be set up on part of the vacant site near Forster Square station - but only on a temporary basis.

Council leader Councillor David Green said he was disappointed by the inspector's decision, as the site would have been "key to the regeneration of the city centre".

The plot, off Canal Road, forms part of a wider area which regeneration bosses at Bradford Council had big plans for, as it is just a short distance from the Westfield site, Bradford Forster Square retail park and the nearby train station.

In 2005, they set it aside for a major retail development - mentioning a large supermarket as a possibility.

But no such plans ever came forward.

Businessman Peter Grubisic then applied to move his used car sales firm from a restaurant car park in Baildon to the site, saying this would create at least two new jobs.

The plan was for the business to operate out of two cabins on a vacant patch of land near Canal Road's junction with Holdsworth Street, which is being used as a car park.

This was turned down by Bradford Council in July, with planners saying it would be piecemeal development of part of a site they wanted to save for wider retail use.

Mr Grubisic took the matter to appeal and has now secured the compromise.

Planning inspector Jonathan Hockley said the temporary three-year consent had been the applicant's idea, and was the "ideal solution" to the problem.

Cllr Green said: "We are disappointed that the inspector has overturned our decision not to approve plans for a car sales pitch in what is a prime site in the vicinity of the Westfield development and Forster Square station and key to the regeneration of the city centre."

He said he noted that the inspector had agreed with the Council that the car sales pitch was not an appropriate long-term use of the site, so had only granted permission temporarily.

He said: "Although the outcome of the appeal was not what we wanted, we are at least assuaged by the fact that it is a 'meanwhile use' and the inspector recognises that it is not a long-term proposition."

Mr Grubisic could not be reached for comment.