Residents updated on Terry's site

Plans for the site include a hotel, leisure spa, offices and apartments

Residents concerned about the future of the former Terry's chocolate factory in York are being updated on the progress of plans for its redevelopment.

Grantside is the preferred bidder for the site with a £140m scheme for a new business park, hotel and housing that it says would create about 2,000 jobs.

Those living near the Bishopthorpe Road site are being sent details of ongoing consultations and what happens next.

Feedback from about 1,200 people has been included in the development brief.

Community facilities

The updated version will be considered by councillors at a planning meeting on Tuesday.

Their main concerns related to traffic and conservation while many expressed a desire for a development that would include community facilities and elements that would reflect the site's heritage.

Kraft Foods closed the chocolate factory in September 2005 after deciding to switch production of Terry's All Gold and Chocolate Oranges from Yorkshire to Sweden, Poland and Slovakia.

It saw an end to more than a century of chocolate making in York by Terry's, which began production in 1886 and moved to the Bishopthorpe Road site in 1926.