Residents back move for concerted battle against Knaresborough asphalt plant

Residents have backed a move to launch a crowdfunding campaign and seek expert advice on how to battle against a planned asphalt plant near Knaresborough.

A public meeting called by the Communities Against Toxins group heard residents of numerous villages surrounding the Allerton Park incinerator, beside the A1(M) between Boroughbridge and Knaresborough, voice both bewilderment and anger over Tynedale Roadstone Limited’s ambition.

In its planning application to North Yorkshire Council the firm has stated there would be “demand” for its materials in the area to help build and maintain road surfaces and represent a “sustainable development”.

The documents state Tynedale has various long-term supply agreements with surfacing and maintenance companies in Yorkshire, while its two asphalt plants are in Newcastle and County Durham.

The firm has claimed there would be “no significant effects” on air quality as a result of the scheme and that traffic generated by the plant was unlikely to cause any safety concerns.

Campaigner Michael Emsley told the meeting at Great Ouseburn Village Hall he had run an asphalt plan and, if approved, the plant would spark a threat of an explosion beside the landmark energy from waste recovery park used by North Yorkshire and York councils.

Ahead of North Yorkshire County Council approving the incinerator in 2014 there was a concerted campaign to get it rejected, backed by two MPs with protestors handing in a petition with 10,000 signatures at Downing Street.

The meeting was told the application documents ignored key issues, such as the predominant wind direction, and that many residents would be downwind of dust particles and “toxic threats” from the plant.

Mr Emsley said:

“I am concerned about the human health impacts of some of the nasty materials. Benzine is a particularly horrible chemical and some of its derivatives are even nastier.

“Benzine has been long recognised as a carcinogen and recent studies have recognised the effects of continuous exposure to low concentrations of benzine both occupationally and environmentally.”

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Residents heard claims the plant was likely to create contaminated water which would seep into watercourses as there was no way of processing it and lorries visiting the asphalt plant would exacerbate the existing queues of waste trucks on the A-road outside the incinerator.

The meeting heard nearly 800 objections had been lodged over the proposal, and residents of numerous villages in a five-mile radius of the site state they had been completely unaware of the proposal until recently.

Residents overwhelmingly supported a move to launch a concerted campaign, backed by crowdfunding, work to attract opposition from residents of Knaresborough and Boroughbridge and urgently seek expert advice ahead of a likely decision by the council’s strategic planning committee early next year.

The meeting heard concerns over the committee’s likely decision, given that there would be a statutory presumption on North Yorkshire Council to pass the scheme, that it would generate a large amount of business rates from the plant and some of the deciding councillors would represent divisions from many miles away.

One resident told the meeting how she and her husband had recently moved to the area to be nearer to their grandchildren in Marton cum Grafton.

She added:

“We came for dark sky, the clean fresh air and now this is happening. We’re appalled, and particularly appalled that the playground for Marton cum Grafton school is so close.

“We are going to contaminate the water and the air and I can’t think of anything worse.”

The meeting heard residents of the surrounding villages had been promised the Allerton Park incinerator would not lead to further industrialisation of the rural area and claims that it would be more appropriate to site the asphalt plant in an industrial zone.

Harrogate district garden waste fees set to increase by 7%

North Yorkshire Council looks set to increase garden waste collection charges in the Harrogate district by almost 7% next year.

A report to a meeting of the council’s environment executive members meeting on Monday proposes charging £46.50 for garden waste subscription across the county.

People in the Harrogate district paid £43.50 this year, which means they are in line for a 6.89% price hike.

Charges for the often fortnightly roadside collections of 240-litre bins had been frozen for several years for most district and borough authorities and earlier this year council officers said the average cost in Yorkshire and Humber region for garden waste was around £44.

When challenged over the charges, the authority has emphasised the collections are a non-statutory service, and that it is not considered fair “for people who do not use the service to have to subsidise it”.

The officers’ report states the total number of garden waste licences bought in 2023/24 is forecast to be 126,750, generating an annual income of £4.996m, which is £302,000 above the income forecast for the year.

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The report states the extra income is due to Selby district area achieving “an impressive participation rate” of 43% since introducing charges in July with total subscriptions at 18,500, compared to the target of 6,900.

The council has previously warned of the potential to lose some subscribers as a result of its increase in charges.

Nevertheless, the report to the meeting states there has been no impact on the level of subscriptions as a result of harmonising the garden waste subscription charge in any of the former district and boroughs which already charged for the service.

The report states:

“If people choose not to subscribe to the garden waste collection service, experience from other authorities shows that residents tend to compost at home instead as there is no corresponding rise in residual waste tonnages to match the reduction in garden waste tonnages, therefore there is little impact on the environment.”

Green grants spark concern North Yorkshire will miss out to York

Council leaders have defended funding allocations for net zero projects in York amid claims they received a disproportionate amount of money to North Yorkshire.

A joint meeting of the Conservative-run North Yorkshire and Labour-run City of York councils to discuss the expected creation of a mayoral combined authority in January heard while the councils had agreed on how to split the first significant tranche of government devolution funding, uncertainty still surrounds the transfer of powers from Westminster.

Ahead of the meeting opposition councillors in North Yorkshire claimed the proposed division of the funds for net zero schemes would see York receive 47% of £6.2m being spent on capital schemes, despite having a population of about a third the size of North Yorkshire.

A total of 23 schemes will receive a share of the funding unlocked by the region’s proposed devolution deal, subject to devolution progressing for York and North Yorkshire.

They include street and building LED lighting schemes in York as well as innovation in energy generation, including The Electric Cow Project at Askham Bryan College in the city.

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The farming scheme will fund slurry-fuelled conversion equipment for dairy farms across the region to generate electricity from cow manure.

Other projects approved aim to tackle a decline of biodiversity, such as the project at the Denton Park Estate, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, where funds will support moorland restoration.

Critics of the proposed net zero programme have claimed York residents will benefit from millions of pounds of extra funding at the expense of communities across the vast rural county.

However, York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership boss James Farrar told the meeting the schemes which were being funded represented “a good spread” across the area, including ones in York and every constituency in North Yorkshire.

Countering the criticism, leaders of both councils heralded the investment as a milestone for the region, with North Yorkshire Council leader Cllr Carl Les saying it was “a very exciting time”.

City of York Council’s leader Cllr Claire Douglas said addressing climate change was becoming increasingly important and the proposals represented the first cross-region thinking, rather than for York or for North Yorkshire as entities.

She said: 

“It’s really fantastic to see there’s such a wide coverage of the region.

“I think it’s also fantastic to see that this is the first significant investment that the combined authority is able to commit to.”

North Yorkshire Council set to lobby government for water quality measures

North Yorkshire Council looks set to write to the government calling for fundamental reform of the planning system to improve the county’s rivers, watercourses and coastline.

The Conservative-run council will consider pressing Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey, to make a series of changes to the National Planning Policy Framework to avert pollution as a result of new development.

The proposal has been approved by the authority’s transport, economy and environment scrutiny committee as a recommendation to be considered at a full meeting of the authority next month, alongside a series of other proposals to get to grips with water pollution in the county.

The meeting heard councillors raise serious concerns over water pollution in rivers such as the Swale and Ure, which run through Rishi Sunak’s constituency, as well as the county’s coastal waters, where marine life has repeatedly been impacted by a mystery issue in the water.

Liberal Democrat councillor Steve Mason told the committee the proposals needed bolstering by national policy to ensure developers could not use devices such as viability tests to avoid consideration of water issues.

He said: 

“We need to be lobbying hard for this to be included in national legislation.”

Cllr Hannah Gostlow, whose division includes Knaresborough and the River Nidd, which saw 870 sewage dump incidents last year, said lobbying government would be viewed as “a major step” by the authority.

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The proposed measures will aim to establish what the impacts and receptors are in relation to any development.

The meeting heard neither Local Plan policies nor national framework have the capacity to extend consideration in planning decisions to where foul water is in the main sewer, in terms of how it is treated.

Councillors were told a motion of council, to make water issues a “material planning consideration” would be of limited weight, and were they to be treated as having more weight in a development decision than the Local Plan or national framework, the decision could be challenged by developers at appeal.

Councillors from a range of political groups told the meeting there was a clear mandate to seek to have more robust engagement with water firms “to fully understand capacity constraints and opportunities”.

It is hoped making water firms statutory consultees in planning decisions, in the same way as exists for flooding and highways authorities, would allow the companies to embed expanding their capacity and technologies to reduce the incidence of flooding, whilst accommodating increased usage.

After the meeting, the council’s leader, Cllr Carl Les, said he sympathised with proposals to make water firms statutory consultees in planning decisions.

He said he believed councillors would all support lobbying the government to enable water firms to levy infrastructure charges on property developers to enable them to finance improving the capacity of systems such as sewage.

When asked whether the government should introduce a tougher system of fines for pollution breaches, Cllr Les said he was concerned water users would face increased charges to cover the firms’ fines.

North Yorkshire Conservatives dismiss claims over residents’ questions ban

Conservative leaders on North Yorkshire Council have dismissed claims they are attempting to “stifle democracy” by banning residents who cannot attend their weekday daytime committee meetings from having their questions read out.

Cllr Carl Les, leader of the authority, said the move had been proposed by a cross-party group of councillors earlier this month and was designed to prevent council meetings becoming overwhelmed by questions, impeding debates and council business on the agendas.

Cllr Les was speaking after the authority’s executive pushed forward a series of changes to its constitution last week, including banning questions from residents unless they attended meetings, which are all held from Monday to Friday and during conventional working hours.

The cross-party group of councillors had considered whether the discretion of the meeting’s chair to allow questions to be read out in the questioner’s absence should be removed.

The group has proposed that unless there was an exceptional reason, such as a disability, any member of the public wishing to ask a question should attend the meeting or send a representative to do so.

Failure to do so would mean the question not being read at the meeting, however a written response from council officers would be provided.

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The group also felt that meeting chairs should be able to handle the 30-minute public question time at the start of meetings “in their absolute discretion”.

The proposals, to be put before a full meeting of the authority next month, follows criticism that reducing the number of councillors in the county from more than 319 to 90 in forming the unitary council had produced “a democratic deficit”.

The criticism follows the administration facing fierce opposition to setting a time limit on councillors’ questions to the council’s executive members at the quarterly full meetings of the authority, the only opportunity in which elected community representatives can raise issues before all their counterparts.

Liberal Democrat councillor Steve Mason said the proposals to be put before a full meeting of the authority next month were “deeply concerning”.

He said: 

“Over the past two years we have seen democracy and community engagement attacked and blocked again and again with local government reform.

“There is a growing mistrust of underhand tactics which undermine basic British democratic values. Opposition councillors have already been censored, now they are going after the public rights as well.”

Independent group leader on the authority, Cllr Stuart Parsons added: 

“This is yet another attempt to stifle democracy and limit legitimate scrutiny at North Yorkshire Council.

“It also show that the Conservatives have failed to understand that people have busy lives and are not always available at 10am. Perhaps if North Yorkshire Council held its’ meeting at times suitable for the public then more people would be able to attend.”

The administration, which after seeing its narrow overall majority slip away has merged with three Independent members to form a Conservatives and Independents ruling group, claimed setting a time limit was necessary to ensure the council’s business would not be impeded by endless questions.

Cllr Les said: 

“It is a bit disingenuous to say it is the executive driving this through. What we are doing is acting what the cross-party group has spent some time talking through and coming up with a majority, if not unanimous view.

“Certainly we are not against members of the public speaking at committees.”

When asked if he was concerned many members of the public could struggle to attend the weekday meetings, Cllr Les said the objectors had raised “a valid point”.

He added: 

“The counter point is you could then have a lot of written questions to any meeting and it might get difficult to manage.

“If you had 100 people writing in with a question the committee would only ever spend its time talking about the questions that have been put by absentee members of the public.”

Allerton Park incinerator near Knaresborough hailed a success at scrutiny meeting

Five years after its launch, the controversial £1.4 billion energy-from-waste incinerator near Knaresborough has been declared a success, even by some of the community leaders who voted against it.

The landmark Allerton Park plant, near the junction of the A1(M) and the A59 east of Knaresborough, drew fierce opposition and High Court legal challenges after being declared the best solution to managing 320,000 tonnes of waste a year to improve green disposal methods and avoid landfill costs.

Since the facility opened in 2018, Allerton Waste Recovery Park has continuously exceeded its 70 per cent target for diverting residents’ waste from landfill, achieving nearly 93 per cent last year.

However, the facility has never met the City of York and North Yorkshire Council’s target of recycling five per cent of items in the general waste, only managing just over two per cent for the first time last year.

But Councillor Greg White, North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for waste management, said the continued failure to hit the recycling target was partly caused by a positive reason.

Speaking ahead of a meeting of the council’s transport, environment and economy scrutiny committee examining the plant’s performance, he said that since residents separated high amounts of recyclable materials from their general waste, relatively little material of sufficient quality to recycle was being left to mechanically separate at the plant.

He said overall the facility had proved a success, but needed to increase the amount of energy which could be extracted from general waste at the same time as pressure was mounting from the government to have separate food waste collections.

The meeting heard Robert Windass, the Conservative councillor for Boroughbridge, claim that missing the waste recycling target was due to “the idleness of people who live in the houses who cannot be bothered to put it in their recycling bins”.

Cllr Windass, who went against his Conservative colleagues by voting against the facility as he did not believe the facility would be the best deal for taxpayers, said:

There were a lot of people in the community worried about pollution coming out of the chimneys, but there hasn’t been.”

Cllr Windass said chairing a residents’ liaison committee with the site had been “a hell of a job to start with”, with people fearing the plant would impact on their quality of life and house prices. He said:

“It does work very well. Residents are much more relaxed about it now. The only complaint which we get is HGVs queuing on the road if they can’t get into the site.”

The scrutiny committee heard that since the facility was launched it had dealt with more than 1.5 million tonnes of waste and saved 330,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

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But the meeting also heard that councils were effectively incentivised to provide as much waste as possible as they are paid for it by the site’s operator, which in turn acted as a disincentive to educate residents more about what to recycle.

Councillors were told while processing waste from Derbyshire increased North Yorkshire’s carbon emissions at the site, efforts were underway to cut overall emissions from the site.

After the meeting, the authority’s leader, Conservative Councillor Carl Les, said:

“I thought it was the right thing to do at the time and I still think it’s the right thing to do.

“People call it an incinerator, but it’s producing energy from waste. We should all adopt that hierarchy reduce, recycle, re-use, but there comes a point where you can’t any further, so to get rid of the residual waste and generating energy I think is the right thing.

“I would now like to see some way of capturing the waste heat that is generated and capturing that and we are looking at partners to come next to the site and use that heat.”

His comment is likely to draw criticism from Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones, who this week raised concerns about further development – or “industrial creep” – at the site.

North Yorkshire fire service ‘improving’ despite rising response times, says commissioner

North Yorkshire’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner has said the county’s fire service is improving despite rising response times.

Conservative commissioner Zoe Metcalfe said the service had been working “at pace to make considerable progress” over the eight recommendations linked to concerns highlighted by government inspectors.

Inspectors rated the fire service as “inadequate” and “requires improvement” last year.

Ms Metcalfe told a meeting of North Yorkshire and York’s police, fire and crime panel that following two further inspections to assess progress this year, “initial feedback has been positive” and that the inspectorate was set to publish its findings next week.

She added that areas identified for improvement were on track for completion and the remaining causes of concern were being prioritised.

Ms Metcalfe said following the introduction of a new risk and resource model for the service, “a targeted approach to prevention activities” had been undertaken in the Huntington area, where a controversial move to change the staffing of the station from full-time to on-call is being completed.

However, York councillor Danny Myers told the meeting that according to the latest figures the service had the slowest response time in the country last year.

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In the areas covered by the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, people had to wait for an average of 13 minutes and nine seconds for firefighters to respond to incidents.

This includes time spent on the phone reporting the incident, the crew’s preparation and their journey time.

The response time was up on 11 minutes and 37 seconds the year before.

He told the commissioner: 

“It is a serious concern. The direction of travel is not good.”

Cllr Myers said while Huntington was losing its full-time crew and moving to an on-call station it remained unclear what the impact on response times would be.

He added council tax payers in York paid out more than was spent on the fire and rescue service in the city due to the cost of providing the service across the vast rural expanse of North Yorkshire.

Mrs Metcalfe replied that last year she had consulted widely over the risk and resource model and that she had provided information to the panel in “a very full and transparent way”.

Chief fire officer Jonathan Dyson said “it was very easy to get misled by attendance times” as the North Yorkshire was the country’s largest county, spanning some 2,608 square miles.

He said while the service for Devon and Somerset covered a slightly larger area and had 84 fire stations, North Yorkshire had just 38.

Mr Dyson said he agreed that attendance times were important, but they did not take into account fire engines getting stuck behind tractors on rural roads or that on-call firefighters had to travel to the station before travelling to the emergency.

He said the service was working on “prevention protection” for the most vulnerable.

The chief fire officer added if he had millions of pounds extra he would put them into prevention and protection rather than responses, as he would be “faithfully filing every member of the public by not protecting them”.

North Yorkshire chief fire officer defends charging for false alarm call outs

North Yorkshire’s chief fire officer has defended a policy to charge businesses which repeatedly trigger false alarm call-outs.

Jonathan Dyson told a meeting of North Yorkshire and York’s police, fire and crime panel the ultimate goal of charging for false call-outs was to protect the cash-strapped service’s resources for incidents where people’s lives were at risk.

The meeting heard automatic fire alarms were the predominant call-out for North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and the brigade’s policies had always included the option to charge, but it had made that policy clearer recently in its Risk and Resource Model 2022-2025 as it was “starting to see repeat offenders”.

In the 12 months to March 2022, the service was called to nearly 7,600 incidents, of which nearly half were false alarms.

A study of Home Office data in 2021 found only 2% of confirmed incidents from automatic fire alarms were a result of an actual fire.

It found some 90% of false alarms were due to “false apparatus”, with two per cent being deemed as malicious.

Automatic fire alarms send a signal directly to fire services to respond to, but due to the volume of false call-outs some fire and rescue services now also require a confirmed fire before responding.

The meeting heard businesses in North Yorkshire and York whose fire alarms triggered four false call-out a year would be liable for a charge under the service’s policy.

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North Yorkshire councillor Rich Maw questioned whether the policy was “more of a headline rather than actually something that will deter”.

The meeting heard the policy was designed to protect the service’s appliances and firefighters, to ensure time for training, and “to respond to true life incidents”.

Mr Dyson said the service went to great lengths to ensure it was supporting businesses, and only when it was “absolutely required” would the service start charging for false call-outs.

He added while charging had been proven to be effective in energising managers in places such as universities to tackle people who triggered alarms irresponsibly, he did not anticipate the North Yorkshire service having to resort to charging on a consistent or regular basis.

However, Mr Dyson said: 

“The problem being of course, to some companies it is cheaper to pay any charge that we incur on them than making the responsible persons do their job or the changes that are required.”

Call for North Yorkshire police commissioner to delay chief constable appointment

A watchdog has urged North Yorkshire’s police commissioner to delay the appointment of a new chief constable for up to 15 months, partly to ensure the top police officer sees eye-to-eye with an incoming elected mayor.

All but four members of North Yorkshire and York’s police, fire and crime panel voted to recommend to commissioner Zoe Metcalfe that she postpones finding a successor to chief constable Lisa Winward, who announced last month she would retire in March next year.

A meeting of the panel at City of York Council heard Ms Winward’s retirement had come at a particularly inopportune time as she would be leaving the key role just weeks before a mayor, who would set policing priorities, was expected to be elected to an incoming combined authority.

Panel members heard while the commissioner had decided to launch the recruitment process, with a likely appointment date in April, if the process was launched after the expected mayoral election in May, a new chief constable may not be appointed until 2025.

Ms Metcalfe told the meeting she had been independently advised to launch the recruitment as soon as practically possible by a string of national bodies and top officials, including the chiefs of the police inspectorate and the college of policing as well as Unison.

She said: 

“I am not satisfied that deferring the decision to the incoming mayor, which would incur inevitable delay, for many months, and even extending until 2025, is the right decision for the public, delivery of service and North Yorkshire Police.”

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Following concerns that uncertainty over who the incoming mayor would be could deter some candidates from applying to be chief constable, she added the role of leading the force was an “immensely exciting prospect” for any police leader.

She underlined that if the process was delayed until after the election the deputy chief constable would be asked to step up for “a very prolonged period of time”.

She said her experience of working with chief constables was that they were “very professional people” who would go out of their way to make a working relationship with the new mayor and deliver the mayor’s priorities.

Panel member Martin Walker, a former judge, backed the commissioner’s decision, saying one of the main criteria for a chief constable was to be “independent and strong”.

He said: 

“If two people at the top of the most difficult, important and complex jobs can’t get on, and it has to depend on personalities, I think that’s wrong and frankly it wouldn’t be fit to do the job.

“In my own experience, throughout my career, I have had to work with people I don’t like, and I’m sure some didn’t like me, but it’s necessary to do that in life, and in my view you have to get on with it.”

However, several panel members said the relationship between the mayor and chief constable was vital and they wanted to see the priorities of the incoming mayor part of the process for the selection of a new chief constable.

The meeting the commissioner repeatedly pressed to pause the recruitment process until after a mayor is elected.

Cllr Lindsay Burr, who represents Malton, said it would be an incorrect decision for the public to appoint a chief constable when the force’s strategic direction had not been set by the incoming mayor.

Huby councillor and former police officer Malcolm Taylor said while moving ahead with recruiting a chief constable might be a good decision in the short-term, the appointment was a long-term role.

North Yorkshire double devolution ‘will not help vast majority of area’

A flagship scheme to hand extra powers to parishes following the creation of North Yorkshire Council will not benefit the vast majority of the area, it has been claimed.

Opposition groups on the Conservative-run council have expressed disappointment after it emerged just 11 town councils and one parish council had submitted bids to manage more services in their area as part of what the authority has titled “double devolution”.

The offer to hand powers to parish authorities was initially made in former North Yorkshire County Council’s submission to government for the establishment of a unitary council amid concerns that decision-making for local services would become too far removed.

An officer’s report to a meeting of the council’s executive on Tuesday emphasises how the council has pledged to place local communities at its heart while covering England’s largest county, and double devolution would be “a key platform to achieving this aim”.

However, the report states double devolution applications would need to have a solid business case and be cost neutral to the unitary council.

It states of the 12 expressions of interest submitted by town and parish councils, three did not meet the council’s criteria, including the only one from a parish council.

Knaresborough Town Council could be given powers over its market.

Knaresborough Town Council could be given powers over the town’s market.

The report states Little Ouseburn Parish Council applied to manage grass cutting outside some cottages, but the parish “did not evidence legal competence”. 

Stokesley Town Council’s bid to manage off-street parking was rejected as North Yorkshire Council stood to lose income.

Double devolution bids which are set to be approved include Filey being given the power to manage its public benches, Northallerton and Thirsk and Knaresborough town councils their markets, Richmond Town Council being handed the management of Friary Gardens and Malton Town Council its public toilets.

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Elsewhere, Skipton and Whitby town councils look set to be told their bids to manage services such as toilets and parks need “amendments”, while separate project teams will be established to work with Ripon and Selby town councils to shape their bids due to their “ambition and complexity of the expressions of interest”.

Ahead of the meeting, the authority’s executive member for corporate services, Cllr David Chance, said the authority was looking to “progress cautiously, learning from the experience and developing best practice”.

He said: 

“These proposed pilots are just the start of the process, and the hope is that more will be introduced throughout North Yorkshire in the future.”

However, the authority’s Labour group leader Cllr Steve Shaw Wright said for the vast majority of North Yorkshire double devolution was “just lip service” and “managing a couple of flower beds does not require a fantastic business case”.

Cllr Wright said: 

“It was a nice soundbite, but outside some of the larger towns there’s not a lot to double devolve down.

“The issue across the whole of North Yorkshire is that there is only a handful of sizeable councils that could take on and run services. The vast majority of other parishes either haven’t got the capacity to do it, are reluctant to put the precept up to fund it or there isn’t actually anything there to run.

“It was not a particularly well thought through proposal looking at the parishes and towns we have in North Yorkshire. Most parishes are very small.”

When asked if he believed double devolution was proving a success in North Yorkshire, Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Bryn Grifths said: 

“Not at this stage, it has not taken off at all. I’m very disappointed.

“I’m not sure how much engagement the towns and parishes have had or if they understood what was involved. Having said that it is up to North Yorkshire Council to equip towns and parishes to make it happen.

“I feel Stokesley put a good case forward and North Yorkshire Council’s response has been a bit of a slap in the face.”