WORK on a £7million affordable housing development on ‘problem’ land in Bolton Woods will begin later this summer.

A total of 59 homes will be built on a cleared site of a former hard-to-let masionettes on steeply slopping brownfield land off Livingstone Road.

The homes will be built over two phases work on the first of 24 homes for rent due to get under way next month. This is expected to take a year to complete.

Work on the remaining 35 properties will start next year, with 33 of these released to people under the Rent to Buy scheme.

A row of six parallel streets between Walter Street and Fletcher Lane once housed Victorian terraces, which were later attracting anti-social behaviour.

The scheme, by housing group Incommunities, is being backed by the Homes and Communities Agency and Lumia Homes, who are managing the work in-house.

Geraldine Howley, Incommunities’ chief executive, and Jez Lester, the group’s assistant chief executive, asset management, made the first cut into the ground.

She said: “Everyone is looking forward to carrying out this major new development and delivering more great homes for local people.

“This latest scheme follows hot on the heels of our recent developments in Manningham and the city centre (at Chain Street) and more than half the homes will include a rental option designed to help people onto the property ladder.”

Mr Lester said: “These new homes are set to transform this brownfield site and contribute to the big housing-led regeneration plans for Bolton Woods and Canal Road.”

Councillor Vanda Greenwood (Lab, Windmill and Wrose) has previously backed the scheme, adding the empty land had attracted “undesirables” to it.

The land lies next to an area of Bolton Woods where a £150m ‘urban village’ between Bradford and Shipley will be built.

The 30-hectare New Bolton Woods scheme is a joint venture between Bradford Council and regeneration firm Urbo, under the banner of the Canal Road Urban Village Limited (CRUVL).

The scheme was approved by the Council’s regulatory and appeals committee in November 2015, but only given the official go-ahead in October last year.

The development, which has been around four years in the planning, is set to involve the building of up to 1,000 homes, a primary school, a supermarket, a nursery, a health centre, and a village centre and shops.