North Yorkshire Council has cancelled another Harrogate and Knaresborough planning committee due to a lack of planning applications to consider.

The meeting was set to take place next Tuesday at the Civic Centre in Harrogate.

It means since the new council was formed in April, just four out of nine planned meetings have taken place with none happening since the last meeting on September 26.

The ability to approve or reject planning applications is a key responsibility of elected councillors, with cross-party planning committees based around parliamentary constituencies scheduled to meet each month.

But there have been concerns across the county that power has been concentrated centrally with unelected officers making the decisions instead.

Last month, the Harrogate & Knaresborough committee chair Pat Marsh told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the council was making a “nonsense” out of the current planning system.

In a statement published this week, the council’s assistant director of planning services, Trevor Watson, said one reason for the paucity of meetings was that planning applications in the former Harrogate district area are now been heard by councillors in the Skipton & Ripon and Selby & Ainsty constituency areas instead.

This includes plans for an eco home development in Flaxby tomorrow, which is a resubmitted version of a scheme previously refused by Harrogate Borough Council.

Mr Watson said: 

The next Harrogate & Knaresborough planning committee is set to take place on January 30.

Read more:

• Tory mayoral candidate pledges North Yorkshire bus franchising assessment


• Harrogate’s rare historic items set to remain with local organisations