AMENDED plans have been revealed as developers bid to build five eco-friendly homes on land previously belonging to a football club

Plans for the cutting edge eco-friendly homes which would provide financial support to a village football club were thrown out last month after dozens of objections.

But now planners in Blackburn with Darwen received a revised application for five homes on land off School Lane in Edgworth to be built following the principles of the Passivhaus Institute in Germany.

The plans centre on the former Hob Lane village school playing field.

The site served as the playing fields for the former Hob Lane school until 1985 when it closed.

Most recently the site was used by Turton FC to host matches, though that stopped in 1996.

Club bosses at Turton FC issued a letter of support for the development because it would prove financially beneficial to them.

The club sold the land and a provision was built into the development that it would receive 15 per cent of the value of each plot.

It had hoped to net around £150,000 in total if the development went ahead.

The new application introduces adjustments to the proposal to respond to concerns from Lancashire County Council’s highways department and the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit.

Those changes include the provision of dedicated parking spaces for visitors to the proposed community ecopark.

A spokesman for the developers said: “The application proposes to deliver large family executive homes of excellent design quality, and in a beautiful environment likely to appeal to executives and business leaders wishing to live and stay in the borough.

“It will bring forward a range of economic, social and environmental benefits, which – when read together – represent sustainable development that should be welcomed by the council.

“The application site is a suitable and accessible location for housing, well located to the remainder of Edgworth as a recognised sustainable settlement.

“The proposal has been carefully formulated to provide high quality, sustainable development.

“The design-led approach responds sensitively to the site’s context and setting, respecting the grain of the surrounding townscape and landscape.

“The development will be a positive addition to Edgworth, creating bespoke Passivhaus homes of high design and sustainability standard, complementing the character of the surrounding context in terms of scale, density, character and quality.”

Objectors to the original proposal said the application should be refused due to the site being in the green belt.

Concerns were also raised about highway safety, loss of privacy, lack of infrastructure and the dominance of the proposed development.

Refusing the initial scheme, borough principal planning officer Martin Kenny said: “The proposal, when accounting for the bulk, scale and massing of the five dwellings and the associated domestic paraphernalia and enclosures will result in a contiguous ribbon of development along the northern side of School Lane, where there is currently an open aspect, providing extended views.

“The impact of this would be to have a drastic impact upon openness of the green belt; and by association the purposes of including land within it.”