Harrogate Borough Council Reference: 20/05181/FULMAJ | Residential development of 98 dwellings including access, landscaping and public open space. | Land Comprising Field At 432447 466225 Moor Road Bishop Monkton North

Dear Kate Broadbent,

I wish to set out my concerns to do with this proposed residential development.

I support development of Bishop Monkton, particularly if it encourages young families to settle in the village, thus providing a balanced growth and renewal of its community over time. However, it also needs to be consistent with the profile of the village as it has evolved over the centuries, be proportionate, and rest on social and physical infrastructures adequate at least for the medium term.

These criteria seem to underly the policy of Borough Council as set out in the Bishop Monkton Conservation Area Character Appraisal, which recommends “Development should not impede on the form and character of Bishop Monkton. ... New Development should not adversely impact on the historic skyline, respecting important features.”1 This recommendation is confirmed in the Council’s District Local Plan 2014-2035, which sets out the relevant requirements for the BM2 and BM4 sites as, “The design and layout of development should integrate the new housing across the site with the existing village. this should include ... securing scale, massing and form of new buildings and locally distinctive design detailing.” It adds for the neighbouring BM3 site, “The design of the site should reflect the qualities of the adjacent Bishop Monkton Conservation Area, and positively contribute to the approach to the conservation area in order to enhance or better reveal the significance of this designated heritage asset.”2 These standards are summed up in the Council’s Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, 2016/2020, which says for all three sites, “Any development proposal would need careful design, layout and landscaping.”3

I have read the current proposal from Alfa Homes Limited in the light of these criteria, with which I agree, and make the following recommendations towards meeting the needs of the social and physical structure of Bishop Monkton and towards meeting the design requirements set out by Harrogate Borough Council.

Effect of the development on the social infrastructure of Bishop Monkton

A primary planning objective must be to encourage demographically balanced and socially integrated growth of the village over the coming decades. Given the current village profile, this means that the development proposed by Alfa should be designed to attract young families with children. The current proposal is wholly residential, offering no community services, so any approval should depend on access to and support for the existing services within the village. This means, in particular:

— Meeting needs for a safe and convenient pedestrian exit route across Knaresborough Road and on to the primary school and the village centre, ideally perhaps by way of extending Mains Lane northwards to Ings Lane; also safely crossing Knaresborough Road, enhancing the safety of the pavement on the north side of the road towards and across the Moor Road / Hungate crossing and on to the sports field and village hall, all to standards likely to reassure parents with small children; and providing a safe walking route over the 2km line of Moor

1 HBC Bishop Monkton Conservation Area Character Appraisal, 15 October 2008, p. 23. 2 HBC Harrogate District Local Plan 2014-2035, pp. 306-311, approved 9 December 2020. 3 HBC Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, 2016, updated March 2020.

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Comments on development proposal 20/05181/FULMAJ 2

Road to the main bus stop on the A61. These points are further discussed below in relation to traffic density and road safety on the Knaresborough / road and at the Moor Road crossing.

— Addressing the vital need for fully adequate primary school provision to accommodate all the village children, given that this is a vital resource towards integration of newcomer and resident families, and should thus be an over-arching priority. The school is well located, but is full at present and is arguably in need of upgrading to facilitate modern teaching standards. Approval of the Alfa development should anticipate the need for expansion, which should be fully adequate for currently anticipated population growth. Possible dips in school attendance over time should not be a concern, since it can be dealt with, as it has in the past, by taking overflows from Ripon.

— Specifying ongoing support for the critically significant community services provided by the village hall and sports grounds, in the light of increasing numbers of users likely to be generated by Alfa’s development. This is particularly important, given that the currently proposed plan provides minimal open space, other than that provided for safe movement within the development.

Impact of the development on the physical infrastructure of Bishop Monkton

The development as currently proposed relies mainly on Bishop Monkton’s existing services to accommodate the needs of residents of its planned ninety-eight new houses and their vehicles and those of their suppliers and visitors. However, this reliance ignores already existing and, as yet, unresolved issues. These include, in particular:

— Traffic routing in Alfa’s plan is based on a single exit onto the Knaresborough Road, which suffers from known dangers from speeding vehicles and adds to volume from other exits from the existing developments on the north side of the road. All the exits are close to the Moor Road / Hungate crossing for which traffic calming measures are promised but are yet to materialise. Further, the downhill slopes approaching the crossing from Moor Road and the Ripon side of Knaresborough Road exacerbate this speeding. Both vehicular and pedestrian traffic is thus at risk on the approach roads and the crossing. Alfa propose an ‘escape’ exit, but not for vehicles, onto Moor Road. The Council could usefully consider requiring a safer exit from the development to be on Moor Road, preferably at the south-western corner of BM2, which is likely to continue to be a primary route for traffic to and from the main A61, particularly for business traffic. It should also provide a safer exit for school and residential traffic than exiting onto the Knaresborough Road, although this would still be useful as a secondary exit. These issues will become more urgent bearing in mind that each household is likely to have two, possibly, three cars, due to commuting and potential school run needs.

— Gradient issues for drinking, grey and black water runs from south to north of the village have been a recurring issue from at least the end of the 19th century, as is evident from old minutes of the Ripon Rural District Council, and continue to require jetting and other palliatives. To these are added the problems of surface water dispersal, particularly due to increasing rainfall on the fields of Monkton Moor and flow down the tarmacked road surfaces on the approaches to the village, leading to overloading soakaways, heavy water flow in the beck, and flood risk at the bottom of Hungate and within in the Meadowcroft estate. Aggravating this are the regularly reported issues related to surface water soakaways and catchments and flood risks, Comments on development proposal 20/05181/FULMAJ 3

with problems aggravated by increasing rainfall, seemingly due to pervasive global warming. The built area of the proposed Alfa Development will surely aggravate these problems both through the volume of discharge from 98 houses and from the loss of existing dispersion due to the new hard surface area of the development The Alfa proposal appears to offer only limited solutions to the needs of the development itself, and none to the wider issues of drainage flow down hill from the development and through the village. The Council will presumably wish to make a full drainage evaluation in the light of these concerns.

Respect of the importance to Bishop Monkton of the Council’s design requirements

The Leeds Mercury ran a national competition in August 1907 to choose ‘the prettiest village in Yorkshire’ and attracted 70,000 voters. Bishop Monkton finished well up in the top half-dozen. The villagers have maintained this standard over the past century, which must have influenced the Council in its appraisal of the village as a heritage asset, and encouraged council planners to resist any degradation. In this context:

The development proposal by Alfa appears disproportionate in relation to the village both within and without the conservation area, both as regards to the planned increase in population, number of houses and its surface area. In addition, I notice that the proposed housing density appears to be greater than recommended in the Council’s planning guidelines.

The properties, as currently presented, are at the top of the village and seem likely to dominate by their density, height, and skyline over the small adjacent developments built in recent decades to the north of Knaresborough Road. This dominance extends down and across the village, thus risking to destroy the coherence of the built estate of Bishop Monkton established over past centuries up to the present time, and conserved in the present by the Council as the heir to previous district authorities.

Integration of the whole Bishop Monkton community is a core requirement of this, indeed of any development of the village. This implies that the ensemble of its services should be self-sufficient and, insofar as is practical, enabling our community to be self-supporting. The village is at present a vibrant countryside entity able to differentiate itself from the encroaching urbanisation of the surrounding towns. These are values that have been created over the past thousand years.

I appreciate that the issues raised in this letter could increase the need for developer and other financial contributions, but I nevertheless urge the Council to ensure that any development plans recognise this unique asset of . What must be avoided is the risk of creating a ghetto area alongside but not really within the village.

Yours faithfully,

David Darbyshire

Mulgrave, Knaresborough Road, Bishop Monkton, North Yorkshire HG3 3QG

01765 676138 and 07775712427, [email protected]