MULTI-MILLION pound plans to transform a rundown former factory site with new homes, shops and businesses are due to take a step closer to reality next week.

The former Ever Ready site in Tanfield Lea Industrial Estate , near Stanley, has been in decline since the battery factory closed 20 years ago and has now been demolished.

Durham county councillors agreed unanimously two years ago to allow Esh Developments’ application for the scheme, which is expected to support about 300 jobs.

Conditions required that the existing access to the site from the C128 (Front Street) be closed and new access be created to serve the site on New Front Street. But a legal agreement was not completed and permission was not issued.

Councillors will be told at a county planning meeting on Tuesday (April 5) that Esh Developments have since provided a new masterplan, showing access from the C128 with a range of improvements, which the highways chiefs find satisfactory.

These include a change in speed limit to 40mph on the C128 and New Front Street, while the existing protected right turn from the C128 will be kept and a pedestrian refuge constructed.

Recommending approval, planning officers say: “It is considered no longer necessary to impose planning conditions which seek to restrict or close the existing estate access.

“It will be necessary to impose an additional condition so that the access on New Front Street to serve the retail element of the scheme must include provision for cycle and pedestrian access from the residential part of the development.

“As demolition of the buildings on site has now largely taken place, a number of conditions have been removed or modified accordingly, notably those in relation to the recording of the buildings prior to their demolition.”

Planning permission has already been granted for up to 365 homes.

Residents objected to the original application, raising fears of additional traffic through Tanfield village and Tanfield Lea, including junction tailbacks, as well as potential flooding problems.

Objections were also raised by businesses on the site about the process of relocating to Harelaw Industrial Estate, near Annfield Plain.

In granting outline permission in April 2014 councillors agreed the residential amenity of occupiers of neighbouring properties would not be significantly adversely affected.

The Ever Ready Battery factory once employed more than 1,000 people, but closed in 1996. A major fire caused damages of up to half a million pounds when it ripped through a storage unit next to the factory, containing more than 4,000 bales of rubber and 50,000 litres of oil in April 2002.