By Harry Ward
Horsforth Town Council has written to Leeds City Council’s planning enforcement team and West Yorkshire Police over the condition of a derelict building on Outwood Lane.
Bridge House, a former Bupa office building on the junction with Low Lane, has stood empty for several years. Leeds City Council approved a change of use for the site to 26 apartments in August, more than three years after an earlier permission for the same number of flats was granted and then allowed to lapse. A separate, larger scheme for 43 units on the site was refused in January 2023.
Following its Planning, Licensing and Traffic Committee, the town council has asked Leeds City Council to investigate the property and consider serving a notice under Section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
In a statement on social media, the town council said the building’s windows had been broken and boarded up, and pointed to graffiti, fly-tipping and reports of trespassing, vandalism and anti-social behaviour at the site.
Councillor Aiden Goulden (Woodside, Lab) who chair of the Planning, Licensing and Traffic Committee, said: “Ideally, we’d like to see improvements to the visual appearance of the building, the removal of the graffiti, steps taken to prevent future fly-tipping on the site by the building owner.
“We’d like to see the building more properly secured as well, to prevent antisocial behaviour from taking place in and around the building.”
A Section 215 notice is a legal order councils can use to force the owner of a rundown building or overgrown land to tidy it up or carry out repairs, where its condition is judged to be harming the look of the local area.
Owners who ignore a notice can be prosecuted, and the council can carry out the work itself and bill them for it.
Bridge House sits next to the Cragg Hill and Woodside Conservation Area and has prompted a number of complaints from nearby residents, the council said.
The town council has asked Leeds City Council to inspect the site and take steps to secure it, repair it and improve its external appearance.