LETTERS: Three demands for council over plans for Amazon facility at Scholes, near Cleckheaton

The Amazon indicative masterplan (March 2022) showing A: solar panels on warehouse roof; B: green roof over car park/welfare area; C: planting along Whitechapel Road; D: bund with landscaping; E: revised junction with traffic lights for HGVs

Reader letter: A few years ago, Kirklees Council made a big thing about being democratic. This does not appear to apply to North Kirklees, or Cleckheaton in particular.

Whether you are for or against the Amazon warehouse at Junction 26, you have a right to see and understand the newly submitted plans, which show significant changes to the original plans.

We are now to be blessed with delivery vans in addition to constant HGV deliveries, day and night and other changes which will significantly affect our roads, schools, pollution and the safety and health of residents and, particularly, of our children.

Whitechapel Road will now be used – it was not in the previous plans.

We demand the following:

1. Public access online to all the new plans with more clarity and the ability to print out the information.

2. Public access to print copies of the new plans at our library and other community hubs, particularly for people who cannot access online. Apparently, the cost of printing a set of plans is £800 – surely a drop in the ocean to the Amazon millions.

3. An extension of the date for submissions from May 6 for at least another six months. All previous objections will NOT be counted. We need time to study and understand the new plans before we can comment or object.

Several people have sent queries to Kirklees Council’s planning department and have been told that even they themselves have not had time to fully study the new plans.

Kirklees are pushing through this plan in a dictatorial manner with no thought to our democratic rights for which our ancestors fought so fiercely.