Letters to the editor

We need to spend less energy fighting fires and put more into preventing them from starting!

Just to assure people that I know something about this, I was on Skipton Town Council’s planning committee until I retired this May, and I helped with the Skipton workshops and drop-in consultations on the Local Plan.

The new planning guidelines (the NPPF) were issued by the Government for consultation in July 2011. With hardly any changes, it became law in March 2012.

Craven District Council (CDC) has had well over three years to get a Local Plan in place, and there are no signs it will be finished anytime soon. What on earth are they playing at?

In the workshop for South Craven in 2012, the parishes reluctantly accepted a figure of 160 houses a year for Craven. We felt CDC officers wanted a much higher figure, but they feared to overrule the clear opposition of those present.

On September 14, 2012, CDC issued their analysis of the feedback from the consultation workshops. They suggested building on green fields would degrade tourism, reduce the capacity to produce food locally, increase commuting into Bradford and Leeds, and damage the character of a market town. We could all agree with those observations, but Why did CDC officers give these as reasons to increase the number of houses built?

In the Craven Spatial Planning Sub-Committee on October 8, 2012, officers recommended a housing figure of 175 houses per year, but councillors voted to keep it at 160.

In June 2013, there was an extensive public consultation on land allocation.

In April 2014, the Skipton housing requirement was increased from 60 to 83 per year, without any consultation. If figures can be changed without consultation with the parishes, then why was so much time spent on ‘consultation’? Was it just a charade? I noticed the developers and landowners seem to be consulted at least as much as the parishes, and given more weight! In the CDC’s own five-year housing land supply report issued in May 2015, the requirement was 140 per year (this includes a 20 per cent buffer for ‘persistent under-delivery’). Now the Craven Herald reports the figure is to be increased to 256!

I have been unable to find the latest papers on CDC’s website, but how is it possible that in less than five months, they suddenly discover the need for a massive increase?

It cannot be that CDC’s extensive land ownership is a factor, or the government giving bonuses for houses built. After all, if CDC has ‘persistently under-delivered’ against a target of 140 a year, they have no chance of meeting 256!

What matters is that we will continue to get speculative development of the wrong houses in the wrong places until a Local Plan is adopted. CDC needs to stop fiddling while Craven burns, and get the Local Plan finished.

DAVID WALSH, Western Road, Skipton.

I WRITE regarding the article in last week’s Craven Herald regarding the stone archway causing some concern with local residents but also with our local planning department – Arch to be knocked down after not getting planning permission. Sensible considerations being taken by our elected councillors were undermined by Cllr Kerwin-Davey’s comment “leave the arch and knock down the houses”. It’s just what we need when planning issues are to be dealt with.

G BEWES, Castle Street, Skipton.

I WAS fascinated to read your major feature on the astonishing variety of planning applications for building developments that have been submitted in the district – Objections to houses on pig field site (Craven Herald, October 1).

Much of the blame for this lies with a conscious decision by the Conservative government to give up on conserving things and allow a free-for-all. As you rightly say, councillors frequently have no option other than to approve because the Planning Policy Framework insists on a presumption of approval, even if local residents and their elected representatives know it is crazy.

There does, however, remain a degree of discretion for local councillors. They could get a move on with the Local Plan so all these houses count towards it rather than establish a high water mark, which has to be matched every five years. They could also try insisting those schemes that are passed, after many questions from local residents, stick to the conditions imposed.

I note with interest, for example, that the plan for the latest development by Lovells around North Parade has changed significantly since approval. At approval, it was for 40 per cent affordable housing. Now it appears to have been changed to only 20 per cent affordable.

It would be wonderful if our elected representatives could challenge this fiercely as the type of housing local people really do need more of is affordable housing, even if they feel they have to close the doors to the public when they make their decisions, as they did recently when Lovells was chosen as a developer.

ANDY BROWN, Green Party, Main Street, Cononley.

WITH regard to the planning proposal for ‘Pig Field’ in Skipton – Residents fear a ‘concrete jungle’ (Craven Herald, October 1), may I make a suggestion? What about a multi-storey car park to solve the parking issues in that part of the town. A modernist, suspended pig-shaped structure might look quite striking.

JOHN LOVELL, Rockville Drive, Embsay.

THERE have been three applications to build houses in Silsden turned down without even being considered due to “lack of infrastructure”. Yet, Bradford Council are bulldozing through an application for 51 houses on the canal bank off Sykes Lane although nothing has changed and there is still no infrastructure. Bradford Council has sold an access road for next to nothing.It is a pity they cannot apply the same level of urgency to building the new school, which Silsden so desperately needs.

JANET EMMETT, Millfields, Silsden.