Thousands of new homes in Harrogate — but no new schools this century

This article is part of series of investigations into a broken housing system that lets down local people. Please help us investigate more issues that matter to you by becoming a subscriber here. It costs as little as 14p a day.

Thousands of homes have been built in Harrogate this century — but not a single new school.

How has this been allowed to happen?

Section 106 agreements are supposed to pay for services, such as schools, GP surgeries and bus services, that people living on new housing developments require.

But just £44,124 was spent on Section 106 mitigations in the Harrogate area in 2023/4 — a shockingly low figure compared with the sums pledged.

Throughout this week our investigation will highlight examples of a system that is painfully slow, arcane and virtually impossible to monitor.  

Consequently, promises have been left hanging in the air for years and residents have missed out.

King Edwin Park

A new school was announced as part of the Section 106 agreement for the 600-home King Edwin Park development in 2015. Ten years and five Prime Ministers later, there’s no sign of it.

The need for a new school was apparent in 2015 when the North Yorkshire county education officer warned that three schools (Western Primary and Saltergate Junior and Infant schools) would be “at or very close to capacity without any additional housing within five years”.

They demanded, successfully, that over £2 million be written into the Section 106 deed for a 240-place primary school.

Housebuilding began in 2018 but so far only phase one, consisting of 200 homes, has been completed. Most of the developer’s education contribution doesn’t have to be paid until 300 homes are occupied.

This highlights a fundamental problem — the payments are made at a speed that suits developers.

More recently, two more schools were pledged as part of plans to build 4,000 homes in west Harrogate. Will they fare better?

‘They should have built a new town’

As part of our investigation we met Rene Dziabas, former chair of Harlow and Pannal Ash Residents Association.

For years Hapara tried to ensure local people’s views were heard as part of the planning process.

But the group folded last year amid frustration over how little impact it had with developers and North Yorkshire Council.

Mr Dziabas says town planning doesn’t work on behalf of residents:

The Section 106 agreement in May this year for 224 homes at Whinney Lane in west Harrogate looked good on the surface with a £5.6 million roster of payments. But the sums — and community pledges — should be treated with caution.

Besides King Edwin Park’s non-existent school, the Section 106 deed for Manse Farm in Knaresborough, signed in 2013, included a school and community centre. Neither has materialised. We will look at Knaresborough in more detail in a separate article tomorrow.

Labour made housing targets mandatory as opposed to advisory, which is heaping pressure on councils to approve developments.

Villagers in places like Beckwithshaw feel they are being flooded with housing schemes — but precious little supporting infrastructure.

Derek Spence, chairman of Beckwithshaw Parish Council in Beckwithshaw says former Housing Secretary Angela Rayner “opened the floodgates in places like Harrogate” and control on planning has virtually disappeared.

He says the rush to build has led to more land banking — the holding of land for future development without building actually taking place. The system is being clogged up rather than speeded up.

A new approach?

One scheme in Harrogate aims to counteract the Section 106 lethargy by reversing the traditional sequence whereby infrastructure improvements follow housebuilding.

North Yorkshire Council applied this year for a £6.8 million interest-free loan from government housing agency Homes England to fund education and transport improvements associated with new developments “at an early stage” in west Harrogate.

The council says it is still finalising the contract with Homes England but it hopes the loan will be used to promote cycling and walking and to enable “preliminary design and technical studies” around the two new primary schools at Bluecoat Park and east of Lady Lane.

Cllr Chris Aldred, a Liberal Democrat who represents High Harrogate and Kingsley on North Yorkshire Council, welcomed this approach: “This funding from Homes England is putting things in place before or maybe at the same time as the houses are being built.”

But developers still have control of the ‘trigger points’ that determine when payments are made: the Whinney Lane Section 106 agreement said primary school funding would be paid in instalments when houses are completed – at £5,119 per two-bedroom house every six months – rather than when homes are occupied, as is usually the case.

This might speed up payments slightly but given that houses are unlikely to be completed unless there is a chance they will be sold, don’t expect anything soon.

Delays ‘baked in’

Our investigation found that the economics of Section 106 mean ‘delay’, as academics call it, is baked into the system. Trigger points for payments typically arrive when 30%, 50%, or 80% of houses have been occupied.

It means residents have little idea when payments will happen — or how they can track them. Major planning applications are bafflingly difficult to understand and there is no council employee to contact.

“If the funding came up front, it would be a lot better for residents, certainly better for councils,” says Cllr Aldred. “But I don’t know how you force builders who are there to make a profit. It’s only governments who can force that to happen.”

So despite the government’s rhetoric about “upskilling” councils to enforce Section 106 obligations, it seems generations of schoolchildren will continue to pass through the education system in new-build areas where promised schools have yet to appear.  

Tomorrow - we look at what has happened to the Manse Farm school and community centre in Knaresborough.

This is one of a series of Stray Ferret articles on Section 106 agreements supported by the Public Interest News Foundation, which promotes the value of independent local news providers.