THE next stage of building on the Derwenthorpe estate in York is likely to get the go ahead from planners next week.

Phase 4 of the development will go under scrutiny next Thursday, August 20, when the planning committee of City of York Council meets.

Richards Partington Architects, working for the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, want permission to build 36 new houses on a field west of Metcalfe Lane in Osbaldwick, with the associated roads and street lighting.

The scheme has been revised down from an earlier plan for 40, as four houses planned for land that was earlier earmarked as open space and a wildlife zone have been taken out of the scheme.

Papers due to go to the planning committee show that the original plans - made in 2012 - have had to be altered after it emerged that power lines cannot be laid underground and instead will have to stay on overhead pylons.

With an exclusion zone around overhead power lines, some of the planned houses which would have ended up under the wires have had to be re-sited.

Four of the re-sited homes were then proposed for the designated wildlife space, prompting objections from Osbaldwick parish council and City of York's own wildlife officer.

Now, after another round of revisions, those four homes have disappeared from the plan and planning officers have given the scheme their support and recommended it for approval by the committee.

In a report to councillors, the planning officials wrote: "This latest revision, removing houses on the eastern side of Field 9, is an improved design as the more interesting area of wet grassland is retained with better connectivity to the wider landscape."

The same meeting will see a new accommodation block at Imphal Barracks decided on, and also likely to get approval.

The scheme is for a new three storey block with 126 accommodation units for military personnel returning from bases in Germany - the majority of them short-term transit homes for staff on their way to other bases, but a few larger units as be long-term homes.