A bonfire site fenced off at Grays Lane in north Belfast

SEVERAL loyalist bonfire sites across Belfast have been sealed off to make way for new housing schemes – prompting fears the pyres could instead be built in the middle of the street.

Three annual bonfire sites – two in the north and one in the west of the city – have been fenced off amid planning permission being granted for the building projects.

In north Belfast, Apex Housing Association received approval last week for five new terraced homes on a bonfire site at the junction of Grays Lane and Shore Road.

Apex has also received approval for 20 new semi-detached houses on green space along Hogarth Street in Tiger's Bay where a bonfire is annually constructed.

In west Belfast, planning permission was granted in March for a development at a bonfire site on derelict land at the junction of Shankill Road and North Boundary Street.

Clear Healthcare plans to use the land to relocate the existing Shankill Surgery, as well as build 52 flats and four ground-floor commercial units.

It comes just weeks before the annual bonfire season when hundreds of pyres are lit across the north before the Twelfth of July.

Read more: Analysis - Building on bonfire sites just moves the problem down the street (Premium)

Bonfire builders have already started collecting pallets and other materials ahead of the Eleventh Night.

The waste ground at Grays Lane – close to Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle – has been fenced off by the Housing Executive before it transfers ownership to Apex.

Part of Hogarth Street has been closed off on both sides with metal fencing, with signs saying "road closed" and "construction site – keep out".

Apex said it did not know when construction will begin at the Grays Lane site.

It said work on the Hogarth Street site, for which planning permission was granted last year, began in March and the properties are due to be finished by October 2019.

The Department for Infrastructure said the contractor for the Hogarth Street site is consulting with it to "close the road to facilitate the building works".

North Belfast councillor David Browne, Ulster Unionist Party group leader on the council, welcomed the plans for new housing in his area as "really good news".

The veteran councillor said he did not believe bonfire builders would disrupt any construction of new houses, but he said it was unclear where the annual bonfires would be located when the developments are complete.

On the Grays Lane site, he said: "For years they had the bonfire just in the middle of the road, for as long as I can remember, at the bottom of Grays Lane, and when that site became vacant they put it there.

"So I would say they would just put it back in the middle of the road again.

"The bonfire was always in the middle of the road, Grays Lane, but they usually didn't build it to the Eleventh morning."

Mr Browne added that the bonfire could also potentially move to the old Tudor Lodge site on the opposite side of Grays Lane.

Asked about the Hogarth Street site, he said: "I know the community have been fighting hard for houses for years there and I would be surprised if they let anything get in the way of that, but equally there will be a bonfire in Tiger's Bay because it has been a tradition."

Read more: Analysis - Building on bonfire sites just moves the problem down the street (Premium)