A long-awaited multi-million-pound redevelopment of a major west Cumbrian site took a step forward as detailed plans for the first phase were approved.

Derwent Forest Development Consortium is working to realise businessman Nigel Catterson’s dream of creating an example of eco living and working on the 1,050-acre former Royal Naval Armaments Depot site at Broughton Moor.

The project has been almost 20 years in the planning.

Outline planning permission was granted in 2015 for 24 homes on nine acres near the site’s edge at South Terrace, Great Broughton.

Detailed plans submitted by Reiver Homes, part of Story Contracting, for the homes on the eastern edge of the site were approved by Allerdale council's development panel.

The plans include details of the designs of the houses, which are designed with timber frames and large areas of glass.

The development will kickstart the project by funding the start of clean-up works elsewhere on the land, which is littered with redundant buildings and remnants from previous opencast mining.

The consortium originally marketed the housing site as self-build plots and eight potential customers came forward.

Agent Rachel Lightfoot told the panel more than two years had been spent relocating newts on the site and work would hopefully begin in the next two months to put the roads and infrastructure in place.

She added: "The site is now ready for development.

"Obviously it's important for everybody that something gets going and we have some sort of momentum behind it which will hopefully encourage more people to be interested in the self-build element."

Detailed plans for the remainder of the site are yet to be drawn up but ideas mooted by the consortium have included an eco-hotel and a festival site.

Renewable energy is expected to play a significant part in the development.

The consortium is considering a solar park, biomass, geothermal energy and small-scale wind power, with an educational facility alongside.

Mr Catterson came up with the concept of Utropia in 1995 and in 2001 began looking at the possibility of developing it on the Derwent Forest site.

He got together with partners, including businessman Fred Story, to form Derwent Forest Development Consortium, which was selected by then landowners Allerdale council and Cumbria County Council in 2011 to be the developer for the site.

Since buying the land for a nominal fee, the group has been working on issues such as mineral rights as well as planting a jubilee wood featuring 27,000 indigenous broad-leaf trees on the site.