MUCH has been said by George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, about the Northern Powerhouse, suggesting that local councils and other public service agencies, perhaps the police and the NHS, should merge to become “combined authorities” with a mayor – one person controlling, making and taking decisions which could in no way be described as democratic. To my mind this is rather dictatorial.

Within the devolution debate, it would be unfortunate and an opportunity missed if council leaders were blinkered by defending their own transient perceived local, personal and political fiefdoms.

A major part of this very serious national, regional and local debate must address the continuing scandal of the grave underfunding of rural local authorities. The Government is aware and has conceded that cities and urban metropolitan councils receive 50 per cent more central government funding per head of population than we rural cousins.

The Rural Services Partnership which represents nearly 100 non government rural service delivery organisations and some 126 of the most Sparsely Populated Authorities of Rural England (SPARSE) is the national rural voice of the Local Government Association.

As that national rural service we have for some years now spearheaded a forceful campaign for fairer funding for rural councils. We have prepared our case with cast iron detail but the Treasury and Mr Osborne has not yet financially responded. Government has agreed with our concrete evidence that services in rural areas because of the distances travelled to provide basic services and sparsity of population cost local rural council tax payers much more per head to provide. The Government’s inaction adds insult to injury and injustice.

Any change from devolution has to be worthwhile in the medium and long term and not just a short term political fix. I would suggest that if a mayor is an absolute condition of some autonomy and freedom from constant central government control of local government then we need to place local politics and personalities on one side. For the greater good of Yorkshire, we must rise above the squabbling of party politics to achieve the best economic future for Yorkshire its people and its businesses.

An impartial mayor for the whole of Yorkshire would in effect be the chairman of the board of Yorkshire PLC. A constructive and supportive governance arrangement for all Yorkshire with councils and other major service providers working together with nominated representative leaders on the Yorkshire Board would retain democracy yet will deliver the opportunities and outcomes from devolution to all communities across our great county of Yorkshire. All must recognise that “Yorkshire is the product”and is more than ready to punch its weight and deliver.

This powerful board of elected council and business leaders would give strategic direction to major investments countywide, while maintaining the localism of management of local services, leaving the mayor to promote the greater Yorkshire nationally and internationally.

It is now over to you, council leaders, and of course, Mr Osborne. Have you the will and determination to deliver?

ROBERT G HESELTINE, North Yorkshire County Councillor, Skipton, Senior vice-chairman, Rural Services Partnership and SPARSE.

AM I missing something obvious here? You want to build a couple of reservoirs and find that there is an old reservoir under one of them. Why not just make sure the old one is watertight and incorporate it into the new one above. Instant extra capacity at no extra cost. Simple!

PAUL MORLEY, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston.

THE cycling demarcation safety lane coming in to Skipton on Gargrave Road seems to be an overspill car park for the new farm shop, various office staff and trade vans. Why don’t the police clear it, or is it legal to block the lane?

Seen at the Skibeden refuse site: Lame woman labouring up steps with heavy bags of garden waste. Chap carrying heavy and unwieldy galvanised coal bunker up same steps. Limber chap unloading bits of wood from a Mini. Who do you think the operatives stepped in to help? Yep, maybe the wood looked more interesting.

FWE MANBY, Gargrave.

FOR sometime now I have wondered about the possibility of moving the Barnoldswick Medical Centre into the police station. This was purpose built and within a very short time was threatened with closure. Due to public demand the station remains open, but only manned a few hours a day.

The Medical Centre, however, is bursting at the seams, which must make it difficult for the staff and doctors to carry out their work. The fact that the treatment room is moving to the Rainhall Centre, rather indicates that the premises are not big enough.

Locally Colne, Earby, Skipton and Clitheroe all have purpose-built premises and I feel the people of Barnoldswick deserve the same. The ambulances are now based at the police station and ample parking, something that is denied at the moment, is available across the road.

MRS AM TAYLFORTH, Lister Croft, Thornton-in-Craven.

IT was extremely pleasing to read that Craven District Council are bidding to make Settle the host town for the next Tour de Yorkshire cycle race.

Settle is a fantastic town that is hugely let down by the disgusting state of the public toilets (owned by Craven District Council!) which is, regrettably, the abiding memory that many of our valuable visitors take away with them.

Perhaps the prospect of a successful bid for the cycle race will spur our district and town councillors into taking positive action to provide the town with the high quality toilets it deserves, not just for a one-off event but for all our precious visitors (and locals!) on whom the local economy is dependant throughout the year.

We live in hope!

STEVE AMPHLETT, Vibrant Settle Community Partnership.

WE learn this week from the Planning Portal website (portaldirector.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/ministers-threaten-to-intervene-on-local-plans/) that “councils that fail to agree a local plan could face direct government intervention under new reforms just proposed”.

And further: “Over the summer recess, the government will set a deadline by which time local authorities will be expected to have local plans in place, after which the Secretary of State will have the power ‘to arrange for a local plan to be written, in consultation with residents’. The government also intends to produce league tables of local authorities ranked by their progress in developing their local plans”.

So can we expect even this to have a galvanising effect on Craven District Council? Might we yet see a Local Plan before the decade is out?

MICHAEL DEVENISH, JANE HOULTON, Granville Street, Skipton.

REGARDING last week’s article, Dutchmen in flying visit, if they were in Skipton most of the Thursday before, they must have been moving pretty quickly as by 2pm they started passing our house.

They had come through Hawes before that, frightening people with dogs and annoying shopkeepers.

I let our two small dogs out at 4.30pm and they were terrified. These cars were coming past until at least 7.30pm. It may be fun for some people to listen to them for a short while, but try living on the roadside and listening to more than five or six hours of it.

We also get the bikers from Devils Bridge coming past on a daily basis and they seem to have no thought or consideration for anything or anybody. The noise is horrendous. The amount of accidents on the A65 is not surprising when you witness drivers like we did last Thursday.

Traffic was nose to tail and an idiot in a Mini decided to pass as many as he could on the wrong side of the road, including a blind bend and double white lines. Had anything been coming the other way, you do the maths. Where are the police when you need them?

MRS JM ROBERTS, Station Road. Sedbergh.

I WRITE due to the problems which have occurred concerning the temporary tent used as a prayer place for the Muslim community of Skipton.

Unfortunately due to various problems which have occurred during the alteration to the community mosque, which were totally unforeseen, the length of time the Muslim community has used the tent for prayers has had to be extended numerous times. This has caused problems for some residents who live in the vicinity of where the tent is pitched.

It is not the Muslim way of life to upset and cause trouble for anyone. – in fact, it is quite the opposite.

The Muslim community apologises to the residents who have been affected with the problems of noise etc. The project has taken a lot longer than at first thought. We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

We look forward to moving back into the mosque as soon as possible and hope our relationship with residents can be repaired.

MOHAMMED SHABIR, Pendle Street, Skipton.

NICK Hewes letter in last week’s Herald set out in excellent clarity why “we can’t ignore the facts” regarding greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. He also touches on the powerful arguments why we should not rely on Chinese or Russian built nuclear power stations or fracking for shale gas for our future energy needs. All of these not only involve heavy subsidies going to foreign energy companies, they have decades long lead times to develop. We don’t want ever rising energy bills and our climate isn’t going to wait while we catch up.

Decentralisation of our power supply gives us the opportunity to exploit the wealth of our own natural renewable resources. In Craven we have solar, wind, and hydro power for electricity and conversion from gas and oil fired heating to biomass would encourage a nascent wood-fuel industry.

It’s up to us, at “grassroots” level, to take advantage of these opportunities to benefit our own communities. The timely transition to a low-carbon economy is not going to be achieved by market forces alone, nor is it going to happen by accident. It is definitely not going to be achieved through acrimonious planning disputes. It needs individual communities to decide to act together in their common interest. Teamwork counts – if everyone acts together the job will get done quickly and efficiently.

This is why, in our area, we are creating a team called Community Energy for Gargrave and Malhamdale, CEGAM, modelled on similar voluntary organisations in the Lake District and other parts of the British Isles as well as in Europe, particularly Germany, where over 65 per cent of the country’s renewable energy production, currently 20 per cent of the total, is individually or community owned. The idea is to carry out an energy usage survey and, with local agreement, plan the implementation of community renewable energy projects of a scale appropriate to local needs, funded through a share issue. Ownership would be vested in a Community Benefit Society and profits would be shared between the community and shareholders.

We have the technology, we just need to apply it!

You can find out more about our plans by visiting our website gamaenergy.co.uk.

SANDY TOD, Malham.

REGARDING the Syrian conflict, Mr Cameron, please, don’t do it! We are not the world’s policemen.

Tony Blair was seduced by the Americans into lying about the weapons of mass “deception” which resulted in the illegal invasion of Iraq and then Afghanistan causing the loss of many lives and even more limbs and we must not repeat this.

We ought not to try to impose our culture of democracy onto historically autocratic regimes.

Recent experience shows that they very soon revert back after we have left.

This requires an Arab/Islam solution or a UN intervention and yes we should share a proportionate role in any UN decision.

It is far more important that our resources should be concentrated at home and a very firm stand taken to treat any treasonable offences with the strictest sentences.

Incidentally, will the Chilcott report manage to stay “under the carpet” forever?

DM HUMPHREYS, Airton.

WE wish to make you aware of a number of strong objections that we have with regard to the proposed development on open space within the grounds of Skipton Girls’ High School and access to the development from Salisbury Street/Raikeswood Road.

As an immediate neighbour to the site of the proposed development, we are of the view that it will have serious impact on our standard of living and of other residents in the vicinity.

We believe that the proposed development is far too ambitious for the size of the site. Three three-bedroom, three-storey townhouses with parking for five cars and amenity space on a 0.1 hectare site with extremely poor access is overdevelopment.

The building is much too high compared to its neighbours, and there is not sufficient space between the old and new buildings.

It would have a detrimental impact on our residential amenity. Our only private amenity space is at the rear of our house. In the late afternoon and evening we get direct natural sunlight into our garden and into the rooms at the back of the property. We believe that if this development is allowed to go ahead that we would lose almost all of this natural light and visible sky with the resulting adverse impact on our amenity space.

The area is characterised by two-storey terraced houses running in a North-South orientation. The proposed development is of three storey townhouses in an East-West orientation. This is out of character with the local conservation area. It does not respect local context or street pattern. This proposal neither preserves nor enhances the conservation area and should be rejected.

The new Craven Local Plan calls for development to “make a positive contribution towards achieving a net gain in biodiversity” and to “avoid the loss of and encourage the recovery of ecological networks”.

We note the tree survey report states that the proposed development will require the felling of at least seven trees, including two mature category B trees, and a length of mature hedge. We see this as a huge loss of local amenity and local biodiversity contrary to the stated aims of the Local Plan. The scale of this loss is completely unacceptable and should be refused. We object to this in the strongest terms We believe that the proposed access to the site and high school entrance is inadequate and potentially hazardous to both residents and children entering or leaving the school.

We also believe that the limited space for parking spaces in the plot and poor access will generate a significant loss of on-road parking on Salisbury Street and Raikeswood Road. Parents dropping off and collecting children at the start and end of the school day at the access point is already a big problem.

GARETH AND JULIE WILLIAMS, Raikeswood Road, Skipton.

COULD I, through the columns of your newspaper, thank those people who came from all over West Yorkshire (and further afield) to attend the 130th Service of Thanksgiving for SSAFA (The Soldiers’ Sailors’ Airmen’s and Families Association) at Wakefield Cathedral.

SSAFA is the oldest tri-service military charity in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1885, with a branch formed in Wakefield that year.

For 130 years SSAFA has been helping those who are serving in our Armed Forces, those who have served and their families.

The Service at Wakefield Cathedral was a fitting testament to the work of SSAFA, whenever and wherever there is a UK military presence you will find a SSAFA office working to support those in theatre and their families.

Since 1885 we have been offering support to the Armed Forces Family, Should any of your readers need our assistance, please contact the County Office on 0113 2449254. or by e-mail wyorkshire@ssafa.org.uk.

Thank you once again to those who supported this wonderful event.

TERRY GRAYSHON, County Chairman, SSAFA West Yorkshire.