A FAMILY home cannot be constructed at the Longthorne's Haulage Depot at Hebden, because the site proposed would be too cramped for a modern dwelling, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s planning committee has decided.

At the October meeting the application by Mr and Mrs J Longthorne had been approved but that decision had to be confirmed at the November meeting as it was against officer recommendation.

During the following month several committee members, including Jim Munday, the national park's member champion for development management, decided they could no longer support the application.

Last week, he was one of the nine who voted for refusal with just five supporting the Longthornes .

Mr Munday explained that the authority had already approved a planning application to convert a listed barn beside the proposed site. That barn, he said, would be totally dwarfed by a new four-bedroom house with the latter having very limited curtilage.

The head of development management, Richard Graham, stated that the proposed new house would be on what would have been part of the historic curtilage for the barn conversion and would be an over-development of the site.

Julie Martin asserted that this would create a new sub-standard family home with no garden.

Richmondshire District councillor Yvonne Peacock, however, pointed out that the affordable houses near the national park's office in Bainbridge also had very limited curtilage. "Nobody seems to mind that somebody on benefits lives in a house with very little garden," she said.

She added that it would be in line with government policy to build as many houses as possible on a site with each having very limited curtilage.

"Here we have a local businessman in the national park who employs people. Now that is something I wish we had more of," she commented.

She reminded the committee that this would ensure that another family would remain in the National Park. The Longthornes had stated they wanted the house for a grandson who is required to be on the site so that he could respond immediately to requests to provide gritting and snow clearance during the winter. He would also be there to help ensure the security of the site.

North Yorkshire County councillor Robert Heseltine asked how the committee could ignore the public service that the Longthorne family was providing.

And another North Yorkshire County councillor, John Blackie, pointed out that the family had requested a legal agreement that would tie the house to the business.

Mr Graham, however, said that such a legal agreement required evidence that the house was necessary to the business and that had not been provided.

Hebden Parish Council fully supported the application because of the local need for affordable housing so as to keep up school numbers.

Pip Pointon, ARC News Service