Alba Developments, which took over ownership of the site in early 2018, submitted a planning application for Phase B of the site which would contain 442 homes after holding a positive digital consultation exercise with the local community.

The site at Westfield was granted full planning consent in 2010 for 550 houses, with Alba Developments now submitting plans for proposed changes to the layout for Phase B of the project bringing the development to 659 units. The proposals for the 26-hectare site comprise residential development, with associated car parking, road access, landscaping, infrastructure and a small community centre and retail.

The application for Phase B to the east of the site comprises a total of 442 homes and comes after a series of applications for Phase A, for a total of 217 homes, were submitted during 2019 and 2020 in a process agreed with West Lothian Council.

As part of a public consultation, undertaken online due to COVID-19 restrictions, Alba Developments created a bespoke website for the project and held an online event attended by members of the public.

The planned extension of Westfield has been proposed for around 20 years and has been allocated in the Local Plan and subsequent Local Development Plan for most of that time. Alba Developments is now keen to make quick progress and begin construction next year.

Commenting on the proposed consultation event, Shane Tickelpenny from Alba Developments said: “I am very grateful to the local community for their interest and support during our online consultation. Their feedback has been invaluable and has really helped us finetune the revised layout we have submitted.

“Local people have been promised these houses for a number of years which we know would help bring services such as local busses back to the community.  We hope those benefits and the robustness of our application will help West Lothian Council consider this application quickly so we can take the site to market and begin construction in the latter part of 2021.”