AN admission by Bradford Council that it has been quietly 'creaming off' the interest from a fund to provide affordable housing in Addingham has been greeted by howls of outrage in the village.

Three weeks ago an investigation by the Gazette revealed that £28,000 paid to the council by Redrow Homes (Yorkshire) Limited had been sitting in a bank account since the company was given planning permission to build an executive housing development on Skipton Road in October 1998.

Now the Gazette can reveal that the interest from the account, and the interest from another £359,000 in house developer payments across the district, has been taken out of the bank and used by the authority for any thing it pleases.

Addingham Parish Council chairman Alan Jerome said: "It is a disgrace and totally against the spirit of what was intended - to be able to spend it anywhere is wrong."

Addingham District Councillor David Harrison (Craven - Tory) said: "It is robbing Peter to pay Paul - this is wrong and they owe us an explanation."

One of the co-ordinators of Addingham's Village Design Statement, which aims to try to promote affordable housing for young Addingham people, described Bradford Council's actions as a 'confidence-trick'.

"I am appalled. Bradford just leaves me cold totally. I am not sure what goes on there - it is typical and disgusting."

Ilkley District and Parish Councillor Anne Hawkesworth said she would be calling for a meeting with finance chiefs at City Hall to try to discover what had happened to the money and why it had been used in that way.

"It is absolutely diabolical - it is a con allowing that to happen. If that money has been approved for affordable housing it should be accrued in the pot for affordable housing - it is money that has been given for a specific purpose. I think there is a great ethical problem."

Villagers are angry that while Redrow's exclusive £200,000-each housing development has been built, young people are leaving their home village in droves because they can't find anywhere cheap enough to move into.

But a statement issued by a Bradford Council housing spokesman said: "A total of £387,000 in commuted sums, including the £28,000 from the Addingham developers, is in one special, dedicated account. The interest from all this money goes into a central pot for the benefit of the authority as a whole and not specifically for affordable housing.

"But this is more than balanced by the substantial amount of extra money which the council has to find to help develop any affordable housing scheme. While we are delighted with the commuted sums we have managed to negotiate from developers they are not sufficient to finance entire schemes."

An earlier statement from Bradford Council said there were no plans at this time to produce any affordable housing scheme in Addingham and the money to do so would have to be paid back to the developers in less than four years if it were not used.

Councillor John Cope (Lab - Worth Valley) was chairman of the Keighley Area planning sub-committee when the Redrow development was granted planning permission in the teeth of fierce opposition in Addingham.

Payment of the £28,000 Commuted Sum to help provided affordable housing at another site in the village was one of the conditions of the scheme being given the go-ahead.

Coun Cope told the Gazette that it was not in the committee's remit to follow up what happened to commuted sum payments for affordable houses once they had been negotiated with the developers.

"I think the planning committee's remit is to negotiate these sorts of funds for affordable housing and assume officers deal with it in a prudent and correct manner," said Coun Cope.

Now Coun Harrison has called for a full explanation to be given by Bradford Council and insists that the money should be paid back.

"The interest should be refunded back into where it belongs and spent on what it was intended for. The interest should be reinvested into the fund and used for housing," he said.

Bradford Council's chief executive Ian Stewart recently told a meeting of Addingham Parish Council that he would take an active interest in the problem of affordable housing in the village.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.