Home building in the Dales has always been a thorny subject, but John Sheard, branded an ‘offcumden’ when he moved in 25 years ago, believes it could be open season for developers looking to build new homes in the national park

When my wife and I moved into the Dales a quarter of a century ago, having achieved a lifelong dream of living in the country, it took just four short days for us to discover that we had been unpopular before we even arrived.

We moved in on a Thursday, spent the next two days sorting out the house, and on the Sunday we decided to celebrate with lunch at the village pub. It was there that an angry local lady branded us as “offcumdens” – a word we had never heard before but one which was spouted with anger if not actual hatred.

I will not name the village (what’s the point in stirring up 25 year old rancour when we moved elsewhere within two years) but it turned out that the lady concerned had hoped to buy our house for her daughter – but “you offcumdens have priced it out of our reach”.

We had no idea that we had paid over the odds but this was our innocent introduction to a row that has been going on in the Dales ever since. And, I regret to record, it is likely to get a great deal worse in the next few years.

Housing, and particularly new housing, has been changing the face of the much-loved Yorkshire Dales for decades – but here in Craven there is an additional cause of friction. For the vast proportion of new development has taken parts in one half of the district – roughly along the route of the A65 – which is NOT in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Ten years ago, I was writing that residents of Skipton, Settle, Hellifield and Long Preston were furious that their localities were being swamped with new housing whilst across the border in the national park; they claimed virtually nothing was being built.

This is not quite true – the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) says it grants almost 94 per cent of planning applications but the building rate is much, much slower than in the A65 corridor. In the past two years, just 73 dwellings have been built in the park and there are 54 permissions outstanding.

Well, this month, things-they-are-a-changing, thanks to a controversial speech by Government planning minister Nick Boles, who wants more and more housing, built everywhere...including in the national parks.

Using highly emotive language, he declared that the refusal to build in these hitherto highly protected areas was “in danger of making rural communities into museum pieces, not so much protected as embalmed”.

Although the language might have been overly colourful, there was nothing new in these thoughts: locals in pretty rural villages, particularly in the national park, have been driven out by soaring house prices for at least 20 years as the flight from the cities to the countryside became a stampede.

At one stage, the situation was so bad that the Skipton Building Society offered to put up £10 million as “seed corn” capital to promote the building of small “infill” cottages for locals-only, first-time buyers or tenants in the national park. This offer was never acted upon, however, “due to a change of personnel at the building society” according to a park authority spokesman.

If Nick Boles gets his way, these tight controls will be relaxed. The Government has already fundamentally changed the national park planning rules so that redundant farm buildings can now be converted to residential use which, says Robert Heseltine, veteran Craven councillor and one time national park chairman, “could mean great changes to our much-loved Dales landscape”.

But if that means a few houses dotted about the national park, think again for those of us in the rest of Craven where 736 new homes already have planning permission, there is a heated row going on about plans for another 50-odd on charity land at Tarn Moor, Skipton, and there is a suggestion that future building should be allowed all the way up to the Skipton bypass.

Just how many new homes that could take is anyone’s guess but we must be talking in the hundreds. As Robert Heseltine says, “Our market towns like Skipton and Settle are being swamped, their fundamental character being changed forever.”

One of the problems is that Craven District Council have never got round to drawing up a proper development plan marking out areas suitable for future housing, which Nick Boles and his planners might have recognised. The result: in any districts without such plans, there will be a “presumption of planning permission” that any developer cares to suggest.

“Its roll up, roll up and get your planning permission here”, says Robert Heseltine with black humour.

So, folks, brace you for another invasion of the offcumdens. It would be charitable, however, if we gave them a slightly warmer welcome than my wife and I received 25 years ago. Many of them will go on to play valuable roles in our business, social and community lives – and grow to love he place like me.