PLANS for an affordable housing scheme at Kelly Bray have been deferred for further investigations into the area's mine workings. Caradon District Council's planning officers had recommended the outline application for Poultry Farm, Launceston Road for approval, but serious concerns were raised over the number of known and unknown mine shafts from the former Redmoor Mine adjacent to the site. The proposal by Andrew Selleck is expected to provide around 15 affordable homes on land measuring half a hectare. It would adjoin the recently built Redmoor Parc development. Callington Town Council has opposed the scheme, saying the site is incompatible with residential development because of its mining history. A remediation strategy for dealing with the site's contaminated land arising from mining activity —namely the provision of a capping layer of clean topsoil over the contamination soil — was considered acceptable by the council's environmental protection officer, Caradon's planning committee was told last week. The application was deferred in October for a site investigation to take place and this had been completed and deemed satisfactory by officers, who reported to the committee that there was a great need for affordable houses in the Callington area. But ward member for Callington Cllr Chris Thomas said planning permission should not be granted on the strength of a desktop mining study. 'Redmoor Mine has a large number of mine shafts — four to the west of this site and two running underneath this site,' he said. 'They have been mining here since 1700 but it wasn't until 1870 that it became legal to list shafts — that's 170 years where nothing was recorded. There are two estates to the north of this which have already had major problems of subsidence and contamination.' It was requested that holes were drilled on the site to see exactly what lay underneath the soil. Cllr Godfrey Smale said the council was 'asking for trouble' if it approved this site for development. He said two houses on mining land in Gunnislake went '40ft into oblivion' and people were being caused a great deal of aggravation purely because contaminated land was not being properly dealt with. He said: 'I want to know who is going to supervise the remediation works because there are sites where the work has not been done because it is too costly. 'If the site is drilled everybody knows what's underneath and can do the work accordingly.' Cllr David Carter said the authority could become 'a laughing stock again' if it went against the advice of experts and refused the application and then lost on appeal.