FOUR hundred and fifty jobs are set to be created after developers signalled the end of a 50-year wait by submitting plans for a new Pendle business park.

Developer J N Bentley wants outline planning permission to create the business park on land behind the Punch Bowl pub, Skipton Road, Earby.

It will provide space for general industry and create up to 400 shopfloor and 50 office jobs, according to the planning application to Pendle Council. A new access road to the site will also take lorries away from the town centre and ease a traffic headache for local residents.

Local councillor Doris Haigh welcomed the move and added: "It's something that has been waited for for a very long time.

The firms will employ local people.

"With the creation of the business park there has to be an access road and that will alleviate a lot of problems with wagons which go towards Wardle Storeys, particularly in the School Lane area."

Coun Haigh said the new access to the business park from Skipton Road would also serve Wardle Storeys, the town's biggest employer. Residents living near the firm, which supplies parts for the car industry, have had to put up with lorries using their narrow streets.

The proposed business park site has been earmarked for industrial use for more than 50 years and Coun Haigh predicted the application will go through. "I think it will be quite straight-forward although we will have to wait and see," she said. "Then it's up to the developer to get on with the job."

The site is currently owned by Wardle Storeys but will be acquired by Pendle Council, which will manage the business park.

The scheme has been in the pipeline for ten years but complex negotiations with several landowners over access has caused a delay.

Coun Haigh said the business park would not make traffic on the already busy A56 road through the town any worse.

The outline application is set to be discussed by the council's West Craven area committee on October 5. If passed, a fuller application will be submitted.

Councillors are already considering a proposed extension to the first phase of the business park as one of six possible sites for future industrial development.

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