Council block wharf houses

LEEDS City Council have plans to block housing on the city's wharves on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and Aire & Calder Navigation.

Many apartment blocks have been built on the sites of the old wharves, but the council believes these can be used again for the purpose for which they were built, the transshipment of goods by water.

The plan now is that the wharves in Leeds would be saved for industrial use to protect them from continued housing developments, as councillors want to use some wharves to transport goods and waste materials in and out of the city by barge in a bid to reduce freight traffic on the roads.

Needless to say this is to enhance the council's 'green' credentials with a spokesman relating the now expected exaggeration that 'one barge would take 35 lorries off the roads'.

The proposals will be heard by government planning inspectors in 2011.