Hundreds of Guiseley residents attended a public meeting to hear the future of High Royds hospital.

Guiseley School hosted the second public meeting to give Aireborough residents the chance to comment on proposals to build 560 homes on the site.

Developer The Raven Group led the meeting, showing its grand designs for High Royds, which closed last week, but many were still upset at the number of proposed homes and the resulting future traffic problems.

Vice-chairman of Guiseley and Menston Green Belt Action Group (GAMGBAG), Graham Hoult said: "It was a brilliant presentation of a prestigious and tasteful scheme but it is too large for local residents in terms of the number of dwellings they are proposing.

"The number of houses they are proposing is a price too high in terms of traffic generated."

Aireborough residents were disappointed that workshops had not been organised for them like there had been for the people of Menston.

But Councillor Graham Latty (Con, Aireborough) said he will be organising workshops for Guiseley residents with the developer in the next few weeks.

"By and large the whole room was up in arms about the number of houses they want to build," said Coun Latty.

"People were really concerned about the weight of traffic that it is going to bring onto the road. Nine out of ten questions were concerned with the effect on the road and the number of houses predicted.

"People were very upset that there were only one and a half car parking spaces per house which meant that people with more cars are going to be parking on the roads outside the estate.

"They are also going to have problems if they think people are going to move in and they will want to run a business from there.

"People do not think about setting up a new business and moving house at the same time."

But he added: "I was impressed with the way they did the presentation and I am sure they are going to produce a beautiful estate I am not knocking their ability to produce the goods. I think it is super, but no matter how super it doesn't help Aireborough with all the traffic."

Aireborough MP Paul Truswell made a plea to the developer not to use High Royds as 'a license to print money'.

"The meeting confirmed two things to me. The first is that Raven is striving to do a good job, but the second is that what it is proposing will generate totally unacceptable levels of extra traffic," he said. "Creating almost 600 homes, office space, health or hotel facilities and a primary school will simply choke the A65 which is already heavily congested.

"Raven's own figures suggest an extra 660 traffic movements at peak times, on top of over 2,000 at the moment.

"That is frightening and I fear the figure might actually be higher in practice.

"We appreciate that the NHS will benefit from the money released by the sale and it may be that public access to the green belt areas will be enhanced and the sports facilities upgraded, but we do not want neighbouring communities to pay a totally unacceptable environmental price in the form of gridlock, rat-running and pressure on schools, healthcare and other services."

School governor and prospective Labour candidate Mike King had concerns regarding the proposed Catholic school.

"I am not opposed to the provision of a new Catholic primary school, but unless there is a major piece of social engineering the proposed school on the site would not attract enough students from within the site," he said.

"This would lead to children from other schools being placed at the school and mean yet more traffic being attracted to Guiseley and the site in particular.

Mr King welcomed the provision of a football and cricket pitch but urged the developer to provide more youth facilities.

"The developer will face major opposition unless there is a significant change to the plans," he said.

l An auction will be held at the hospital on March 20.