KH/06
OPENING STATEMENT BY MR. GARETH OWENS KIRBY HILL RAMS 16TH FEBRUARY 2021
1. My name is Gareth Owens, Chair of Kirby Hill RAMS [Residents Against Motorway
Services]. I am instructed to represent the local community in the matter of Applegreen’s
Appeal regarding a proposed Motorway Service Area on the A1(M) at Kirby Hill. We
object to the proposed Kirby Hill MSA and ask the Secretary of State to dismiss this
Appeal.
2. Kirby Hill RAMS is an independent residents’ group formed for the sole purpose of
objecting to the proposed Kirby Hill MSA. We represented the local community at the
1997, 2003 and 2010 Public Inquiries and have been granted the status of a Rule 6 Party
to the Kirby Hill Appeal at this Inquiry. While we have no professional qualifications in
the field of planning, our extensive local knowledge enables us to present a case based on
evidence that accurately reflects the first-hand knowledge and day-to-day experiences of
local people over many years. We are therefore in a unique position to provide the
Secretary of State with a valuable, first-hand, local perspective on the issues under
consideration.
3. Kirby Hill RAMS’ case represents the views of the local community and the views of all
seven local councils surrounding the proposed site, namely, Kirby Hill & District Parish
Council, Marton-le-Moor Parish Council, Langthorpe Parish Council, Dishforth Parish
Council, Skelton-cum-Newby Parish Council, Roecliffe-with-Westwick Parish Council
and Boroughbridge Town Council. Together, these seven local councils represent an
electorate of 5,055 people, plus their families, who live in the vicinity of the proposed
site.
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LOCALISM
4. The Localism Act 2011 introduced radical reforms to planning in England and promoted
the creation of what Prime Minister David Cameron called the ‘Big Society’, in which
local people and their local councils determine the shape of the places where they live and
work, with minimum interference from central Government. The impact of Localism on
the Planning System was felt very quickly, when the Secretary of State abolished
Regional Spatial Strategies, in favour of increasing the weight attached to Local
Development Frameworks and to the decisions of Local Planning Authorities.
5. Together with our Local Planning Authority - Harrogate Borough Council - Kirby Hill
RAMS are the Big Society at this Inquiry. Despite the Kirby Hill Appellant’s frequent
statements to the effect that we are not experts, the Government’s policy objective of
empowering communities to shape and influence development in their local area requires
that our views be afforded significant weight. I know that you understand this principle,
Sir, because you have already gone out of your way to listen to the views of local people,
as we shall see this afternoon and at the Evening Session you kindly agreed to. It is vital
that we recognise, as we start this Inquiry, that planning decisions are best taken locally.
To this end, I have today written to the Prime Minister, to the Secretary of State for
Communities and Local Government and to Sarah Richards, CEO of the Planning
Inspectorate, making them aware that this Inquiry is an example of Localism in action at a
virtual Inquiry. I have asked them, as I now ask you Sir, to ensure that the views and the
decisions of local people in the matters before this Inquiry do not become trampled
beneath the twin feet of a central Government agency such as Highways England and the
commercial ambitions of the Appellant, who seeks to develop the proposed Kirby Hill
MSA at any cost, without concern for the substantial harm that would be caused to the
local area and to our community.
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6. At a local level, the decision in respect of a proposed MSA at Kirby Hill has already been
taken three times over the last 25 years. Each time, the proposals have been rejected,
because Kirby Hill is not a suitable site for an MSA. The promoters of the Kirby Hill site
have appealed against the LPAs decisions three times before and the matter has three
times been placed before the High Court, where permission has consistently been refused.
The question that local people are asking, Sir, is ‘why are we even here again’? The
answer, sadly, is that this site has a recalcitrant promoter who, despite 25 years of refusal,
will not take ‘No’ for an answer, because they have no respect for the properly-taken
decisions of the Planning System. Following the failure of their most recent High Court
Appeal, they set out to undermine the Secretary of State’s 2012 decision, by partnering
with Applegreen to bring forward yet another MSA application for the same site.
7. Kirby Hill RAMS wish to inform the Secretary of State that Applegreen’s Appeal should
also be dismissed, because the proposals represent unnecessary development in the open
countryside and would cause substantial harm to interests of acknowledged importance,
contrary to Local and National planning policies and to Section 54A of the Town &
Country Planning Act. There should be NO MOTORWAY SERVICES AT KIRBY
HILL.
8. Our case objecting to the proposed Kirby Hill MSA can be stated simply: there is no need
for an MSA at Kirby Hill and the proposed development would cause substantial harm.
NO NEED
9. The Appellant’s need case relies on their claim that the spacing between the existing
services at Wetherby and Leeming Bar is marginally greater than 28 miles and that this
automatically creates a proven need for another MSA. We disagree.
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10. We note that the Appellant has not followed the official Highways England distance
verification methodology used at the last Inquiry for measuring this gap that is so crucial
to their case. A less rigorous measurement approach has been adopted, apparently in a
deliberate attempt to inflate the distance and claim a gap in excess of 28 miles. We will
demonstrate that this is a flawed approach. Therefore the Appellant’s claim of a 28.8 mile
gap cannot be relied upon.
11. In any case, we will show that the 28 mile maximum spacing in DfT Circular 02/2013 is
only a recommendation, based on an approximate travelling time of 30 minutes between
services.
12. We will further show that even if motorists have to travel a few hundred yards beyond the
recommended 28 mile spacing, this is not sufficient justification to cause the substantial
harm associated with the proposed Kirby Hill MSA. The Secretary of State knew what
the gap between Wetherby and Leeming Bar was, when he issued his 2012 decision that
one new MSA would meet the need and that it should be at Leeming Bar. He accepted the
spacing, but he rejected the significant harm that would have been caused by a new MSA
at Kirby Hill.
13. Dr. Ramsden’s evidence shows that he has analysed other factors affecting the need for
an MSA at Kirby Hill, such as the recent £840 million upgrades of this stretch of the
A1(M) to improve motorists’ safety and journey times. His analysis shows that safety and
journey times have indeed improved since 2012 and that traffic flows on the upgraded
motorway are lower than forecast. On this basis, the need for an MSA has actually
decreased since the last Inquiry.
14. Finally on this topic of Need, even if the Inquiry were to accept the Appellant’s claim that
the Leeming Bar MSA permission will never be implemented and that therefore a larger
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gap exists, common sense dictates that it would better to locate a new MSA in the middle
of that gap, rather than off-centre to the south at Kirby Hill, just 12 miles from the
existing Wetherby MSA. This is precisely the view that the Secretary of State took in his
2012 decision.
15. It is clear to us, Sir, that there is no need case for an MSA at Kirby Hill. This is the
first ground on which we ask the Secretary of State to dismiss this Appeal.
SUBSTANTIAL HARM
16. The second ground on which we will ask the Secretary of State to dismiss the Kirby Hill
Appeal is the substantial harm that the proposed development would cause.
17. Mr. Harris’ will show in evidence that the proposed site forms part of a valued landscape.
He will demonstrate that the Appellant’s LVIA is deficient and that it provides an
assessment of the landscape that is completely at odds with the extensive local knowledge
of people who have lived and worked here for many years. His evidence is that the harm
caused to the landscape and to the character and appearance of the local area would be far
more significant than the Appellant claims. The Local Planning Authority agrees with
Kirby Hill RAMS on this point. We will show that this harm would in fact be worse than
the impact of the double-sided MSA proposal rejected by the Secretary of State in 2012.
Our case, Sir, is that on grounds of Landscape harm alone, the Secretary of State should
dismiss this Appeal.
18. Mr. Pickering shows in his Written Statement that the harm caused to BMV agricultural
land would also be more significant than claimed in the Appellant’s Environmental
Statement. This significant impact on BMV agricultural land is contrary to Local Plan
policy NE8 and to paragraphs 8 and 170 of the NPPF. Although the Appellant’s experts
claim in their Environmental Statement that there are no suitable alternative sites for an
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MSA on this stretch of the A1(M), the UK’s leading MSA operator, Moto, has brought a
site forward which uses no BMV agricultural land. This was also the preferred site of the
Inspector at the 2010 Inquiry. The NPPF requires (at Footnote 53 to para 170) that “where
significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of
poorer quality land should be preferred to those of a higher quality”. There is no policy
support for causing significant harm at Kirby Hill to one of the highest-quality blocks of
BMV agricultural land in the whole of North Yorkshire.
19. Mr. Pickering also explains in his evidence (and I’ll use an agricultural metaphor here),
that our present national circumstances place us at the sharp end of a three-pronged
pitchfork, comprising: Population growth, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. These
three prongs, taken together, mean that the need to protect BMV agricultural land should
receive significantly more weight at this Inquiry than it has done in previous decisions.
20. Dr. Ramsden shows in his Written Statement that the proposed scheme would cause harm
by creating additional safety risks on the local road network, when compared with
previous MSA proposals at this site which have been rejected. This harm relates
specifically to the creation of the proposed MSA rear entrance on the B6265 - which is a
designated Killed-and-Seriously-Injured Route - and to the new diversion of the A168
trunk road that the proposed development would require. There is no safety-related need
for the proposed MSA that outweighs this harm to the safety of the local road network.
21. Mr. Collins shows in his Written Statement that the Appellant’s proposed solutions for
drainage of foul and surface water from the MSA would cause significant harm to the
local environment and community. It is timely that the Inquiry should consider the matter
of this harm now, when two new major housing developments at the foot of Kirby Hill,
which were approved with the same planning condition about restricting surface water
runoff, are currently under water. The flood water is so deep that special health and safety
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measures, including a life-ring, have had to be put in place. Emergency arrangements
have been made for a Drainage Engineer to visit the site tomorrow and advise what to do
about the flood waters. As we struggle with this unprecedented flooding on our doorsteps
due to mishandled major development, the local community would like to highlight to
you, Sir, the issues that Mr. Collins raises in his evidence. We note that the Lead Local
Flood Authority’s outstanding concerns about the proposed development caused the
Council’s Planning Officer to modify his recommendation to one of deferral until they
were addressed. The Planning Committee itself cited foul and surface water drainage
issues as one of their reasons for refusal. These issues have still not been overcome. The
evidence, in our streets today, is that they cannot be adequately covered by a planning
condition and that they will, if not addressed, cause harm and exacerbate the current
serious problems of foul and surface water drainage in our community.
22. Mr. Collins also shows that the Appellant has a track record of polluting local
communities by pumping sewage away from their MSAs, as evidenced by a High Court
injunction granted against Applegreen in Ireland. Yet the drainage strategy for the
proposed MSA remains to pump all the foul and surface water from the site under the
A1(M) and disperse it in the direction of Kirby Hill. Sir, this is anti-social behaviour, not
sustainable development. We submit that on the evidence of past harm, in all probability
there would be future harm from the proposed MSA, due to an inadequate understanding
of local hydrogeology and the impact on it of the scheme’s drainage proposals. This
harm would be contrary to policy CC1 of the Harrogate District Local Plan and to the
Environmental and Social sustainability objectives of paragraph 8 of the NPPF.
23. I turn now to the relevance of the rapidly-escalating global Climate Change emergency.
This Inquiry provides what we believe is the first-ever opportunity for an Inspector to
consider Circular 02/2013 policy and a proposed expansion of the MSA network in the
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context of the UK’s signing of the 2016 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the
Government’s legally-binding commitment to achieving ‘net zero’ by 2050. We submit
that Climate Change policy is a material planning consideration in this Appeal. The
Appellant acknowledges in their Climate Change strategy, published on their website,
that: ‘As a business based around motorised vehicles, we are conscious we are
contributing to the problem’. However, in the four years that their experts have worked
on this planning application, the Climate Change impacts of the proposed MSA had not
even been considered, until Professor Wilby raised them on behalf of Kirby Hill RAMS
at this Inquiry. The Appellant’s Climate Change expert agrees with Prof. Wilby that slow-
moving traffic using the proposed MSA would cause three times the greenhouse gas
emissions locally of the same traffic if it continued its journey at speed. He calculated the
effect would be a net increase of 1.76% in local emissions or the equivalent of 3,720
kgCO2e/day, which Prof. Wilby shows is approximately the same as one Boeing 727
airliner taking off and landing near Kirby Hill village every day. This net increase in
emissions would cause environmental harm by undermining the achievement of local and
national Climate Change policy objectives, including the Council’s policy objective of
making Harrogate the UK’s first carbon-neutral District and achieving ‘net zero’ by 2038.
24. Prof. Wilby’s evidence also shows that it is possible to make a valid comparison between
the emissions created by the proposed third runway at Heathrow and those created by the
national MSA network. In light of the recent Court of Appeal and Supreme Court
judgements in the Heathrow runway case, we submit that the 2016 Paris Agreement and
the ‘net zero’ target should be a mandatory consideration in national MSA policy and in
any expansion of the MSA network, such as the proposed Kirby Hill scheme.
25. The national MSA policy Circular 02/2013 is now eight years old. It does not take into
account the UK’s commitment to ‘net zero’ by 2050 under the 2016 Paris Agreement.
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Circular 02/2013 is therefore out-of-date and should accordingly attract less weight, while
Climate Change policy and its effect on road transport must now be given significant
weight. Prof. Wilby’s evidence is that in the absence of any proper assessment of the
Climate Change impacts of national MSA policy, the Secretary of State should exercise
caution regarding further proliferation of the MSA network and should dismiss this
Appeal. We think that a key lesson for central Government from this Inquiry will be that
the proliferation of MSAs is making the problem of Climate Change worse.
26. On the subject of the local economy, Mr. Geoff Craggs, a respected local businessman,
shows in his Written Statement that the proposed MSA would harm the economy of the
market town of Boroughbridge, by diverting staff and trade away from the town.
27. Sir, at this Inquiry you will not just hear from local residents about the substantial harm
that the proposed Kirby Hill MSA would cause. You will hear from their elected
representatives, who have a democratic mandate to enact the will of the local community.
They wish to inform the Secretary of State that approving an MSA at this site now, after
25 years of refusal, is a spectacularly bad idea. It would be an affront to the principles of
Localism and to the vision of the local area that they have worked hard with the local
community, over the last 6 years, to set out in our Local Plan.
28. Councillor Lawson, Chair of Kirby Hill & District Parish Council, will show in evidence
that the proposed MSA is contrary to this agreed vision set out in the Local Plan and that
a decision to approve would cause social harm to the local community. The proposed
MSA is therefore in conflict with the social sustainability objective of paragraph 8 of the
NPPF.
29. This afternoon, the Inquiry will hear Councillor Nick Brown, the Harrogate Borough
Ward Councillor for the Ward including the proposed site, who will add his weight to
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Kirby Hill RAMS’ case. This evening, we will hear Councillor Collins, Chair of
Langthorpe Parish Council, make an objection statement in his capacity as elected
representative for Langthorpe.
30. Finally, Sir, Kirby Hill RAMS are honoured that Councillor Windass, a respected former
Mayor of both Boroughbridge and Harrogate; a former Chair of North Yorkshire County
Council; and the current Chair of the Harrogate Borough Council District Development
Committee will give evidence as part of Kirby Hill RAMS’ case. Councillor Windass was
a member of the Planning Committee which refused this application. His evidence shows
that when all of the material considerations are weighed in the planning balance, it is
abundantly clear that the overall level of harm from the proposed MSA development
would significantly outweigh the benefits. This was the unanimous view of the decision-
makers on Harrogate Borough Council’s Planning Committee and in the words of
Councillor Windass: “With all due respect, we found that it was very clear-cut and not a
difficult decision”.
31. Sir, taken together, this substantial harm constitutes an adverse impact that
significantly and demonstrably outweighs the benefits of the proposed development,
when assessed against the policies of the NPPF as a whole and in particular the
sustainable development objectives set out in paragraph 8. The proposal is not
sustainable development. Therefore the Appeal must be dismissed.
32. The Appellant accepts that the proposed development would inevitably cause harm.
Their case appears to be that any harm caused to our locality is justified by the need to
provide an MSA for the convenience of motorists. We submit that there is no need and
that therefore the substantial harm that the proposed development would cause at Kirby
Hill is not justified. Even if a need for another MSA is proven, the degree of harm that
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would be caused at Kirby Hill is unacceptable and there is another, less harmful, proposal
before this Inquiry.
CONCLUSION
33. In conclusion, Kirby Hill RAMS case is that there is no need for another MSA at Kirby
Hill. In 2003 we accepted that there was a need for an MSA on this stretch of the A1(M).
The Secretary of State concluded that a single MSA at Wetherby would meet the need
and specifically rejected any two-site strategy involving Kirby Hill. In 2012 the Secretary
of State concluded there was a need for one new MSA and approved the development of a
brownfield site in the middle of the gap, at Leeming Bar. These two permissions achieved
the recommended 28-mile MSA spacing. Kirby Hill is not needed, it is too far south and
too close to Wetherby.
34. Furthermore, the proposed Kirby Hill MSA would cause harm that significantly and
demonstrably outweighs the benefits. It is not sustainable development. Our Local Plan
and the NPPF require that permission should be refused.
35. Sir, this is the considered view of the Big Society, represented at this Inquiry by Kirby
Hill RAMS. We respectfully request that, for the reasons I have given, you recommend
that the Secretary of State should dismiss this Appeal and ensure that there will be NO
MOTORWAY SERVICES AT KIRBY HILL.
Gareth Owens, MSc (Oxon), MBCS, CITP Chair, Kirby Hill RAMS 16th February 2021
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