Councillor John Mann has called for a moratorium on the allocation of new housing sites in the West of Harrogate. A new Local Plan has just started to be drawn up for the county by North Yorkshire Council to replace the existing Local Plan that was inherited from the former borough councils in the county.
He has written to the North Yorkshire Council Executive to say that the west of Harrogate has already been allocated more than its fair share of new housing sites under the existing Local Plan and that its road infrastructure is already under strain.
John said:
Whinney Lane, Green Lane, Yew Tree Lane, Hill Foot Lane and Burn Bridge Road are already near to full capacity, especially at rush hour. These country lanes should not be asked to take further traffic from new housing allocations in a new Local Plan.
Under our existing Local Plan, the Council allocated housing sites in the west of Harrogate for between 3500–4000 dwellings and these are either currently being constructed or awaiting planning permission. This is in a part of Harrogate with an acknowledged weak infrastructure and this number of new houses means that the west of Harrogate could ultimately be absorbing over 6,000 additional cars, 2,500 of which would be on the road in the peak hour.
Meanwhile, the Government have just announced new housing targets for all councils. The Government is proposing setting a target of 4232 dwellings per annum for the county of North Yorkshire. This is a significant uplift on North Yorkshire’s previous target of 2315 dwellings set out in the existing Local Plan. A new target of 4232 dwellings will mean that many more allocations of housing sites will be needed across the county.
North Yorkshire Council has just started work on a new Local Plan, which will have to take into account the Government’s new proposed target for housing in the county, and I am very concerned that the west of Harrogate might have to accept the allocation of additional new housing sites In the new Local Plan.
Whilst I understand the need for more new houses to be built in the county, they have to be built in the right location and with the right infrastructure.
The existing Local Plan stipulated the sites for housing allocations in the county, but in my view it provided for too many houses for the former Harrogate Borough Council (HBC) area compared to the assessed housing need. Whilst the objectively assessed housing need for the HBC area was 13,377 dwellings, the existing Local Plan provides for 16,077 dwellings – or 20% more – over the period up to 2035; and the western side of Harrogate is expected to absorb nearly a quarter of it, i.e. nearly 4,000 houses. It should be noted that so far to date, only 700 of this total have been built.
This over-provision of 20% was justified at the time by the former Harrogate Borough Council on the grounds that some sites might fail to come forward or would be delivered with reduced yields. However, as it has turned out, all of the sites in the west of Harrogate have come forward, and developers have consistently applied for more dwellings than the yields indicated in the Local Plan – in fact, across the western side of Harrogate this amounts to an average creep of 14.2%. Given the excessive provision within the existing Local Plan for the HBC area, allowing developers to increase numbers on each site has just further exacerbated the over-provision of housing in the west of Harrogate.
In the light of this over-provision of housing in the west of Harrogate compared to assessed need, and the well-known lack of road infrastructure in the area, I have therefore written to North Yorkshire Council Executive, asking for a moratorium on the allocation of further new housing sites in the west of Harrogate in the new Local Plan for the county.
