TOWN leaders are looking favourably on an engineering company's plans to build a new factory in Ilkley.

Ilkley Parish Council's plans committee has held back its recommendation on the plan by Spooner Industries Limited for Mayfield Road, awaiting further information.

But councillors praised details of the plan and said they were keen to help keep employment in town.

Spooners, which makes industrial dryers and ovens, plans to move its operations to a new factory on a three-acre plot of land next to its current site. The company rents its current site from leasing firm Plessey Investments Ltd, but would own the new industrial building.

Parish plans committee chairman, Councillor Kate Brown, said: "There's a lot more information to come yet. We didn't reach a formal recommendation, but we do feel it's important to keep employment in Ilkley, and we felt that the new building - providing it didn't dominate the houses nearby, was sympathetically designed."

Bradford Council planning officers had asked Spooners to slightly move the proposed factory on the intended site, to avoid being too close to trees on the site which are protected by Tree Protection Orders.

It is believed that council highways officers are also in talks with the company about the access road to the site.

And the parish council is asking Spooners to add more landscaping to its plans. Councillor Brown said the company's managing director came to last week's plans committee meeting, and said the company hopes to address the points made, and come to an amicable agreement with the planners.

Speculation about the future of the site currently occupied by Spooner goes on, however.

The relocation of Spooners could mean a six-acre plot of land would be open for development close to the heart of Ilkley. Present Government planning guidelines encourage the building of around 25 houses per acre in a site of this type.

And as developers are frequently queuing up for vacant plots of land to build more houses in high property price areas such as Ilkley, some believe as many as 150 new houses could eventually spring up on the Mayfield Road site.

Plessey Investments' plans for the future of the land is not known. The site is currently classed as employment use land by local authority planners, and before the owner or a developer could gain permission to build houses there, the land's official use designation would have to be changed.

Developers have been able to overcome the issue at other sites in Wharfedale in recent years, including Low Mill in Addingham and at the former International Wool Secretariat research centre on Valley Drive.

Ilkley Parish Council is already keeping an eye on Spooners site, because it is concerned about the potential impact a large housing development close to the centre of the town would have on Ilkley's infrastructure.

Ilkley parish plans committee plans to make a recommendation to Bradford Council on the plan for the new factory, which will be considered alongside the studies of Bradford's council officers and any representations from members of the public. Spooners recently held a meeting with residents living near the new site, to explain what is planned and hear their views.

If Spooners plan is agreed by Bradford Council, the company aims to be relocated to its new factory by 2007.