A housing developer is seeking permission to build homes alongside a road that is expected to open this summer.

Miller Homes North-East hopes to build almost 200 homes on a former brickworks site next to Crook bypass.

It has made two applications, which will be discussed by Wear Valley District Council's development control committee on Thursday.

The first is for 166 homes on a four hectare site off West Road. The second is for a further 15 homes to the north of the main site, next to a Bett Homes residential development.

The plans feature ten house types, including three and four bedroomed houses laid out as a mixture of terraced, semi-detached and detached properties. Most would be two storeys high with some three-storey townhouses.

People living in neighbouring Snowball Close and the owners of a 24-hour taxi firm operating from nearby Lindale House raised concerns about access to the main site.

The area will be landlocked until the bypass is complete and they feared the developer would use the streets.

Planning officers, who have recommended the plans be approved, have said neither will be used for access to the site.

Both plots used to be part of the Eclipse Brickworks and in the mid to late 19th Century formed part of Crook's main industrial development.

Experts at Durham County Council's cultural services department have called for an investigation of the archaeological potential of the site, which officers have recommended is made a condition of approval.

The £2.5m bypass will take the A689 south from a roundabout opposite Crook Football Club along the route of a former railway line to Prospect Road.

It is being built to reduce town centre traffic and to open up the land for industry and homes.

Prime sites at the junction and to the south of the bypass have been protected for future light industrial or office use, leaving the land in question available for housing.

If council planning chiefs approve the proposal landscaping, planting and future business units would provide a buffer between houses and Beechburn Industrial Estate.

Miller Homes has agreed that if approval is granted the company will make a financial contribution towards a play area to the north-west of the site.