An unnamed housing company is in negotiations to buy a field in Bogs Lane in Harrogate with the intention of building new homes, the Stray Ferret understands.
The Kingsley area is already one of Harrogate’s main pressure points for housing – and could see more than 650 new homes eventually built. A local residents’ group said the area has reached a “saturation point” for new homes.
The field is between Henshaws College and Long Lands Common, where thousands of local people raised £375,000 to purchase 30 acres of land to plant trees and protect it from development.
Local estate agent Lister Haigh is marketing the land as a “rare opportunity” to buy a greenfield site that could be used for a potential residential or commercial development.
The Stray Ferret has seen an email sent by the estate agent to a person who enquired about the land. The person asked not to be named, but the email confirms that negotiations are already under way with a housing developer.
The email says:
“Currently negotiations are ongoing with a commercial housing development company who want to build houses on the site.”
Read more:
- Harrogate residents: ‘Act before someone is killed’
- Harrogate residents disappointed at 95-home Granby Farm approval
The site, which is 1.4 hectares, is not allocated for development in Harrogate Borough Council’s Local Plan. This is a guide for where commercial or residential development can take place in the district until 2035.
Similar sites in the Local Plan have been allocated for between 30 and 40 homes.
John Hansard from the Kingsley Ward Action Group was alarmed at the news that the Bogs Lane field could be sold for housing.
He told the Stray Ferret that residents will fight any potential planning application for the land.
He said:
“In any new development area, there has to come a time when you reach saturation point, beyond which the area cannot continue to function as neighbourhood community and simply becomes a soulless conurbation, an out-of-town sprawl of housing, lifeless, with no community spirit or indeed willingness to create such a spirit.
“I feel so sad and afraid that in this area we are already at that tipping point, if not beyond it and that unless this mindless devastation of our green spaces stops, we will be at the point of no return for our community.”
