SKIPTON residents could be forgiven for getting confused about housing developments currently in the planning process – and now we have another large-scale one looming on the horizon.

Just weeks after tenants of Craven District Council garages in Aldersley Avenue were given notice to quit, Persimmon Homes has announced plans to build 96 houses on farmland the other side of the site.

It emerges the developer has been in talks with the council about the garage site, and it has agreed to purchase it if planning permission is granted for the homes.

Meanwhile, Persimmon, if not the largest, one of the largest, housebuilders in the country, is not messing about.

Having just leafleted residents about its 'masterplan' and invited comments, which it says are important to it, the company has said it plans to submit a full planning application for the site next month. No outline planning application here, to establish the principle of development, followed some months later with a full, detailed application; but straight in with the full planning application.

Bearing in mind the site is allocated in the draft Craven Local Plan as a site suitable for housing, it appears the only barrier in the way is any potential highways issues, which will be down to North Yorkshire County Council to decide.

Residents of Aldersley Avenue will be no doubt worried about increased traffic on their currently quiet residential road, and will be thinking sense will prevail, and that the road can simply not take another 200 cars per day. But residents close to similar proposed large-scale housing developments in the recent past will know that is not the case, and highways rarely objects to increases in traffic alone.

Residents, barely still taking in the news, could well find planning permission in place before the year is out.