A public inquiry over a £20 million plan to build houses on Ilkley's former Middleton Hospital site has been put back from next month to the New Year, a planning consultant has revealed.

But an objector to the plan said the whole issue had been thrown into confusion by the submission of a new planning application by developers Clays of Addingham.

The new application includes a reduction in the number of houses by 25, from 103 to 78, more in accordance with the original planning brief drawn up by Harrogate Council officers.

Harrogate planners have now withdrawn the planning brief which envisaged a 'Dales' type village on the site of the hospital. The land is owned by the Durham-based National Health Service Executive. The new plan is due to go before Harrogate Planning Committee next month and consultants acting for Clays hope that an agreement with local authority planners can be reached to see it passed.

In a report to the joint advisory committee of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, planning consultant Andrew Rollinson says: "Although the Council has cancelled the previously-approved strategy, the applicants and their advisers consider that much of its content was agreed over a long period of negotiation and that it is still very valid to the assessment of this current proposal."

Because the original application contained more houses on the site than the 80 in the planning brief, members of Harrogate's planning committee were minded to reject it.

One objector to the plan, Griet Terpstra, of Valley Drive, Ilkley, said that the site had become a safe haven for scarce wildlife in the years since the hospital closed.

She said that the new plan would cause just as much damage as the original one.

Mrs Terpstra said: "All the objections raised by the previous application are standing for the new one. It is a reduction in the number of houses but it does not give a reduction in any of the problems."

Objectors also claim that building on the site would put too much pressure on the local road network.

Because of fears about increased traffic on the A65, Department of Transport officials have called in the plan for a detailed examination.

There are also concerns about the visual impact of a housing development seen from the other side of the Wharfe Valley and its impact on the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

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