SIR - At the last full meeting of Craven District Council I was shocked to uncover the reality of the planning situation in the Skipton area ('Concern at rate of housing approvals', Craven Herald, May 3).

Over 60% of all the houses planned to be built over a 20-year period have either been built or have been approved to be built already.

We are only six years into a plan that is meant to be completed by 2032.

On current trends we will have built the entire plan in only ten years.

That might be fine if what was being built met the local need for more one and two-bedroom houses that young people can afford to buy or more specialist accommodation for the elderly. Nothing of the kind is happening.

Instead the council weren’t even able to tell me what the size was of the homes that were being built because they haven’t been monitoring the situation.

Developers keep putting in applications to build four and five-bedroom homes which are typically sold at fifteen times the average local salary. Few of them are building the one and two-bedroom places that are really needed.

Developers aren’t going to go away after they have finished building new estates on every exit road from Skipton.

Once they have delivered the entire 20-year Local Plan for 1,300 new houses in only ten years they will be back asking for more green fields to be built on and destroying the last scraps of green space that exist between towns and villages.

National planning laws need strengthening to enable us to ensure we get the homes we need.

Instead national law insists planning committees favour “sustainable” development and then allows developers to appeal against local decisions but refuses that right to local citizens.

Locally we need a planning committee that is strong and determined to protect our wonderful local environment. Instead we have one that ignores its own Plan and approves schemes that were not included in it.

Cllr Andy Brown, Green Party