THE number of homes to be built on the controversial Altham Road Meadow has been slashed by more than a quarter to make way for a nursing home. The current owners, Crowther Homes, was given the go-ahead to build just 40 houses instead of the original 65 at a planning meeting last week. Meanwhile campaigners battling to save the piece of green land say their fight is still on going.

Although planning permission has not been given for the nursing home yet, the new layout is expected to make the site less intensively developed and provide better parking spaces.

David Robinson, sales director of Crowther Homes explained to the Citizen: "We've been approached by a nursing home company interested in buying a section of the land from us and building on it themselves."

This has sparked outrage from Cllr Carol Broad who said the reason why the council agreed to sell the land in the first place was to meet the local housing needs. She said: "A lot of people feel duped. We wanted to turn the area into a park but were told there was a shortage of housing in the district. Now it looks like part of the land is going to be used for a commercial purposes."

Building work has already begun on the meadow but a campaign spokesman trying to salvage it from the hands of developers, said: "We've sent more than 4,000 letters from residents begging the council not to build there. Morecambe has one of the worst records for open spaces in the whole country.

"We accept the council needs to build houses but surely this part of Morecambe has had its fair share of new house building in the last few years. The area cannot sustain any more housing."

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