A REFERENDUM to give people their say on where new homes should be built in a Pendle town will be held early next year.

The 'people's choice' of possible housing sites in Barnoldswick will be put forward during an exhibition in the town as part of a move to find 2.3 hectares of housing land to meet the demands of builders in the next century.

But the possible sites will not include land off George Street, which is at the centre of a storm over the recent chopping down of more than 100 trees by a developer. Councillors agreed at a previous meeting that the site will not be considered for housing.

"Housing land allocation is a very important issue for any town," Liberal councillor David Whipp told last night's meeting of Pendle Council's West Craven area committee.

"I hope we have a blueprint, not for development, but how we will genuinely draw people into a consultation exercise and give a true picture of what people in Barnoldswick feel about their town.

"This brings the issue back to Barnoldswick and allows Barnoldswick to decide its destiny, rather than councillors from the other side of the borough telling us what to do." Pendle Council previously decided to '"ring fence' the town from housing land issues elsewhere in the borough.

Proposed housing sites already put forward in two previous rounds of consultation will be looked at again during a week-long exhibition of the options available. A date and location for the exhibition has yet to be set.

Space will be given to local people to put forward their own ideas on where new homes should be built and, during the exhibition, all Barnoldswick electors will be invited to vote in a referendum on the issue.

The results will go forward to the area committee for a final decision in February.

The move was backed by the single Labour and Tory councillors on the committee. But the debate, which lasted over an hour, degenerated into political point-scoring, with lengthy exchanges over housing policy in the town between Coun Whipp and Councillor Azhar Ali, leader of the Labour group, who was in the audience.

Barnoldswick has to find 2.3 hectares of potential housing land to meet government and county building targets for 2001-2006.

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