City of York Council consults on cutting housing target in proposed local plan changes

10 June 2019 by Colin Marrs in Planning Resources

Our dedicated and hard working Planning Wardens in the City of York area alerted CPRENorthYorkshire trustees to application 2018/02687/OUTM, a hybrid application for up to 516 residential led mixed use development immediately adjacent to the Askham Bog site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).  The application site is 40.05 hectares located within the York Green Belt 14.78 hectares of the site is proposed for development.

The comments in the York Press below are interesting showing a wide range of opinion;  The article states that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revised down a previous projection for future household growth in York from 884 per annum to just 442

.https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/16957338.fresh-row-over-housing-numbers-in-york-local-plan/

Now of course if we adopted a smart approach to housing as called for by CPRE across the country things might not be so bad! CPRE suggests that the 'predict and provide' approach that uses population and household projections as a basis for determining future need is not the best way to solve the housing crisi!  These projections are always an important PART of the evidence for planning housing but they only extrapolate past trends and therefore should be treat with caution.

We suggest a plan monitor and manage approach - referred to as SMART planning!

A crude application of predict and provide is likely to increase pressure for higher levels of land allocation and potentially (all too frequently) greenfield development.  Because of the discrepancies between theoretical predictions of aspirational demand and the availability to convert this into effective demand, this can frequently lead to an over supply of land allocation for housing.  Again, ALL TOO FREQUENTLY is can mean that there will often be market pressure on sites less suitable in planning terms to be developmed before more sustainable ones.

And always remember, you can grant all the planning permission you like but you cannot make developers build.  We cannot be confident that an application granted to provide a reasonable quota of the much needed affordable homes will actually be built but we can guarantee wth almost 100% accuracy that most of the applications granted where an affordable quota that is 'worth something' is promisd, we'll see the developer come back arguing they can't afford to buid out the affordable quota and replacing these needed homes with yet more "exekkertiv" homes built on new estates with roads named The Oaks, The Hollies the Hawthorns etc ........in memorium to the trees and hedgerows they bulldozed to make these large homes.

REFUSED!!

The amended application to build a large scale poultry farm in the York Green Belt on a site where no farm previously existed has been refused by City of York planners and planning committee

It will no doubt come back in a different form.

We will continue to campaign to prevent this type of new industrial scale development in the green belt.

http://www.cprenorthyorkshire.co.uk/news/current-news2/item/2491-three-or-six-sheds-it-s-the-principle-of-development-on-this-site-that-is-the-issue

 STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS

It with restored confidence in the system that CPRENorthYorkshire is pleased to report that Planners have recommended the poultry farm application in the York Green Belt for refusal!

CPRENorthYorkshire has now responded to the City of York's latest phase of the Local Plan - in this case the Regulation 19 Consultation

In Planning Resource this week, the following was reported

Council facing Javid local plan intervention rejects extra housing allocations