A PARLIAMENTARY candidate has launched a major campaign to try and prevent more housing in a south Tees community.

Louise Baldock, who is the Labour Party candidate for the marginal Stockton South constituency, is fighting plans to build more houses in Ingleby Barwick.

As previously reported in The Northern Echo, a planning application to build 550 new homes at Low Lane, will be debated at Stockton Borough Council’s planning committee in Stockton Central Library on Wednesday, February 26.

The plan is controversial because an earlier, smaller housing development on the same site has been approved on condition developers build a new ‘free’ school.

Some councillors have previously claimed the new school was being used as a so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ development. Once the smaller scheme was passed and new infrastructure like roads put in place, the developers could then submit larger housing schemes which has proved to be the case.

The area’s Conservative MP, James Wharton, has said he approved of the first scheme for the prize of gaining a new school. However he stressed he was opposed to any further development.

Ms Baldock has launched a larger campaign against the new housing. She has leafleted every house in the community and struck up a petition which so far has about 250 names. She will speak in person against the development at Wednesday’s committee meeting and has an online campaign against the new building.

She said: “All these new families will actually mean we need a new junior school and there will be other stresses on infrastructure. It is absolute madness to build that many homes there.”