MULTI-million pound plans to build more than 250 homes on farmland have been submitted.

Banks Property has filed its plans to build 271 homes, each with two to four bedrooms, on a 27-acre site at Browney Lane, near Meadowfield, County Durham, to Durham County Council.

The outline application is expected to come before a council planning committee in the next few months.

Banks, which is based in Meadowfield, says it wants to continue its investment in the area and meet local demand for high-quality homes, while bringing employment, economic and community benefits for the area.

The project is expected to create around 30 jobs.

The firm says the scheme was given a warm welcome by villagers at a public exhibition held in August, with two-thirds of people backing the proposals. Eighteen per cent of respondents objected.

Michael Shuttleworth, managing director of Banks Property, said: “We’re very pleased to have reached this landmark and believe our development proposals will bring a wide range of benefits to the community if they are approved.

“Traffic was a key consideration in our planning, as well as for the local people to whom we spoke, and we’ve worked hard to ensure the measures that we would put in place as part of this development would actually improve the movement of vehicles around the area, rather than add to congestion concerns.

“Getting such a positive response from so many local people to our outline ideas gave us confidence that we were working along the right lines and our knowledge of what the area has to offer makes us very confident that a family-focused, high-quality development of this type would prove very attractive to homebuyers.”

A statutory consultation period on the application has begun. To view the proposals and comment, visit durham.gov.uk